


Past Progressive

by Guede



Series: The Time Travel Grammar Book [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst and Humor, BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Stiles, Baby Werewolves, Babysitter Scott McCall, Background Character Death, Brother-Sister Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, Pack Dynamics, Pack Politics, Peter Feels, Slow Build, Talia Hale Feels, Trauma, Werewolf Culture, Young Chris Argent, Young Hales, Young Peter Hale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-08 13:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 46,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6857665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young newly-single mother Talia takes her three children home, only to find her parents missing and her teenage brother talking about strange monsters in the woods—and they’re werewolves themselves, after all, so this is worrying.</p><p>Meanwhile, Stiles, Scott, and Lydia touch down in yet another timeline.  Obviously, they’re not here for the nostalgia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Talia says, frowning at the house.

“Mom, Cora just spit all over me!” Laura yelps. She bats at her little sister’s hands, which are trying to play with the headband in her hair, and then cranes her head way back into the headrest as Cora flails at her chin, face screwed up in disgust. “It’s all over my…God, you little twerp, did you get it on my new—”

“Don’t call your sister a twerp, and it’s just spit, it’ll wash out,” Talia mutters. She takes the keys halfway out of the ignition, pauses, pushes them back in, and then shakes her head and takes them all the way out. “Just…Derek, hand your sister a tissue, would you?”

Her middle child is slow to respond, because he’s plastered to the backseat window and staring at her parents’ house. When he finally jerks away, there’s a cloudy smudge on the glass the size of his nose. 

Derek wiggles in between the two front seats and pokes around till he finds the tissue box. By then, Laura’s given in and just let Cora pull at her hair, grimacing so much that her eyes are just little squinty dashes. “The lights are off, maybe they aren’t home,” Laura grumbles. “Can we just find a hotel and get something to eat? I’m starving.”

“I’m just going to go check, and if nobody’s home, we’ll leave a note and then go. Now look, try and keep your brother and sister from destroying the car for the whole five minutes I’m going to be out, would you?” Talia says.

Well, half-snaps. Maybe more than half-snaps, from the way Laura darts a look at her and Derek abruptly withdraws to the backseat. Talia feels a pang of guilt, but it’s just in passing, and well-muffled under the frustration that’s slowly built up over several hours of driving in a small space with two unruly children and one child who’s too quiet about when he needs something. It’s terrible, but sometimes she almost wishes being a werewolf let her potty-train her children the same way dogs are.

Talia shakes her head and gets out of the car, absently checking for nearby heartbeats and scents. The surrounding preserve hadn’t looked any different on the drive up, and the woods immediately around the house smell the same, sound the same. Some of the underbrush is creeping out closer than she remembers, but that’s not exactly strange.

The lights are off, and as Talia makes her way slowly up to the front porch, she doesn’t hear anything inside the house. Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything either. They could be down in the basement, or in some of the tunnels leading out from there, where the walls are too thick for even werewolf hearing to penetrate. And Talia didn’t exactly call ahead.

Still, something about the house just…makes her hackles rise, and if she shifted out, she’d bet her ears would be pinned back. She gets to the first porch step and stops, and then she moves back a little, looking up at the dark second-floor windows.

Then she turns around and looks back at the car. Laura and Cora are making faces at each other, while in the backseat, Derek’s solemn, slightly squished face is pressed against the glass again. Though he ducks down when he realizes she’s looking at them, going completely out of sight for a second before just a fringe of hair reappears over the bottom of the window.

Talia rubs her hands against her hips, then…walks back to the car. She turns around there, looking at the house again, and she has one hand on the handle of the driver’s side door when a heartbeat suddenly drums into existence. It’s rapid and irregular, and is far too close for someone who’s simply running up. They’ve been masking it in some way.

“Mom—” Laura starts.

She shuts up so quickly her teeth click when Talia snarls. Low enough that only another werewolf would be able to hear it, but clear enough to make the point. Talia takes her hand off the door and steps away from the car, then goes around to the back end, since the heartbeat’s heading in that direction.

The heartbeat stops moving—the person stops moving. Their heartbeat keeps fluttering along, filliping every so often like they’re panting, and then they turn around and go in the other direction. In a matter of seconds, Talia can no longer hear them.

A loud, nearby creak makes Talia whirl. Laura winces and then wiggles so that she can get her head all the way out the rolled-down window; Cora’s trying to climb on Laura’s shoulder but Laura keeps dragging her down by the back of her onesie. “Mom?” Laura hisses. “What’s going on? What’s with them?”

“I’m going to see, stay in the car,” Talia says, taking a step towards where the heartbeat had been.

“Mom?” Laura says again, her voice rising and sharp with mixed annoyance and fear.

“I’m not going to go where you can’t see me, now just be quiet for a moment,” Talia says.

She unsheathes her claws as she walks back up to the house, then turns at the porch steps so that she’s going around it. She still doesn’t hear anything from inside—Talia takes another step, listening closely, and then spins and scoops her hand down and rips open the cellar door she’d just passed.

White face, glowing amber eyes, and then a haphazardly-thrown puff of stinging, wolfsbane-laced dust are what Talia is greeted with. She blows out the entire contents of her lungs the moment she smells the wolfsbane, dodging to the side and down, and then she yanks out the werewolf just as they try and say something.

The cloud clears up, and Talia stares at the boy she’s holding off the ground. “Peter?”

Peter coughs—he got more than a whiff of the dust—and then musters up a crooked, more than a little shocked, smile. “Talia? Aren’t you supposed—supposed to call so Mom and Dad know to avoid you?”

“Well, that’s why I didn’t,” Talia says, hastily lowering her brother. She pats at his shoulders as he keeps coughing and wheezing, then sneezes herself as a thick layer of gritty dust comes off him. No wolfsbane, just regular dust, but…

Talia takes Peter by one shoulder and tugs him out into the better light. He comes along without so much as a smart remark, which is a big sign by itself. And when she gets a good look at him, he sneaks a glance at her, then flushes and half-heartedly jerks at her grip, his hand rising almost to shield himself and then dropping.

“Peter, what on…” Talia looks sharply over her shoulder at the cellar “…were you hiding down there? How long have you been there?”

Her brother blinks at her, frowns, and then blinks again. His eyes flick back and forth in a strange, rapid zigzag. He moves his mouth, coughs hard enough to make himself slump against Talia, and then grunts irritably as she tries to haul him back onto his feet.

“I don’t know,” he finally mutters. “What day is it?”

Talia sucks in her breath, tightening her arm around him. She looks at the cellar again—there’s no lock on the outside of it. And anyway, Peter should’ve been able to get out through the inside door or a tunnel…she looks back at Peter. “Where are Mom and Dad?”

“I don’t know,” he repeats. His hand pats at her side, dragging awkwardly onto her hip, and then he hitches oddly and passes out.

* * *

“All righty,” Stiles says, checking the side-view mirror. “Good old Sunnydale, here we come.”

“What?” Scott says, jerking his head up. “Did we take the wrong turn ag—Stiles, that’s the Beacon Hills exit.”

Stiles opens his mouth, closes it, and just sighs and eases up on the gas. “Considering we have literal _decades_ of time, Scott, we really have to do something about your pop culture reference knowledge. And before either of you start, it’s even period-appropriate! _Buffy_ the series came out in ninety-seven, and the movie a full five years before that.”

“Do you not think that we’ll have enough work adjusting to the technology and fashion and, oh, yes, trying to convince people we’re from the future?” Lydia says from the backseat, in a tone that indicates zero interest on the Kelvin scale.

“Well, I don’t know, Lyds, I think we’ve practiced that to the literal end of the world,” Stiles replies. Just because the first hours after a time jump always give him an antsy, crawly-under-the-skin feeling and there’s no reliable way to get rid of it except, you guessed it, time. Science fiction seriously underestimates the malleability of the human mind when you deliberately don’t use logic, and so he’s never had issues like paradox-induced insanity.

Then again, he’s pretty sure his mental state of being has shifted well away from normal, so maybe he just doesn’t have an accurate frame of reference. And has absolutely no intention of looking for one, at this point. Survive one apocalypse, it could be just dumb luck. Two, it’s your friends. Three, well, let’s just not screw up something that’s had the ultimate endurance test.

“Hey,” Scott says, stirring Stiles out of what was rapidly turning into a maudlin fit, damn it. The other man pulls himself up and twists over to peer over the dashboard, then points at a building at the end of the street. “Wow. Look, it’s so much…smaller.”

“They won’t build the long-term care wing for another six years,” Lydia says. She shuts the dinosaur of a laptop she’d been working on, then groans as she heaves it off her lap and into its protective case. “Are we coming up on the realtor yet?”

“Right here.” Stiles pulls into the parking lot, which is across from the supermarket, and then turns off the engine.

He and Scott and Lydia pile out, Scott automatically turning in a slow circle as he checks out their surroundings, while Lydia smooths her skirt down over the knife holster strapped to her thigh. It takes about two seconds for the two of them to clock the suspicious guy walking down the sidewalk away from the realtor’s office, with what looks like a couple open-house flyers in hand.

“Already called it, two stoplights back,” Stiles says.

Lydia shoots him a look that combines a warning to stop doing noob time traveler stuff where people can hear with pure exasperation. “Can we just get our house keys?”

Scott’s already halfway up the front walkway, though he’s walking sideways to keep an eye on the guy. Who doesn’t seem to have spotted them, and who casually climbs up into the classic black SUV, slightly streaked with fresh mud. The SUV promptly pulls away, heading towards the interstate ramp.

“They’re early, aren’t they?” Scott mutters when Stiles and Lydia catch up to him. “I thought Gerard didn’t move anybody in till after he and Deucalion had their first fight.”

“Just because they’re scoping, doesn’t mean they’re moving,” Stiles says. “Maybe they’re just doing a sweep, looking for new residents.”

“Like us?” Scott says, raising his brows.

Then he and Stiles both stumble as Lydia shoves them in the backs. She pulls away her hands, closes them with a sweet, entirely fake smile, and then slips between them. “Hurry up, you two. The sooner we stop being paranoid in a parking lot, the sooner we start being paranoid with a home base.”

Thirty minutes later, they walk out with the keys to a nice three-bedroom house on the side of town skirting the preserve, and assurances that all the utilities have been set up and ready to go. Fifty minutes later, Stiles has his ass in the living room of their rental and only half of three boxes of cables unpacked, and he’s already cursing the vintage horror that is dial-up Internet.

“We didn’t even have power generators for two months, we had to make do with bonfires and steam power,” Lydia says, lugging a bag across the hall. “Do I have to tell you to have a little perspective?”

“Well, that’s the problem,” Stiles says, squeezing the bridge of his nose and squinting at, God, _loading_ bars. “It’s not as bad as it could be, but it’s bad enough that you wish you didn’t have the promise of progress.”

Lydia starts to take a breath.

“It’s like if I reminded you that they have foundation but they haven’t thought of tinted moisturizer yet,” Stiles adds.

“Touché,” Lydia says, and jerks the bag up the stairs.

She comes down a few seconds later and stands behind Stiles, watching him futilely try to navigate the shitty online portal—with frames!—for the FBI’s criminal statistics database. He gives up and just lets that lie in the browser, and switches over to the other window where he’s trying to remember how the early version of eBay is laid out.

“Scott wants to go out and check into those hunters, and see if he can find Deaton,” Lydia says. “He found a phone book by the mailbox and Deaton isn’t listed yet, but the vet clinic is.”

“God, I miss GPS-enabled phones,” Stiles says. 

Lydia sighs. He can tell from the inflection, length, and draggy ending that she crosses her arms in the middle of it. “I think I might go charm some local employees at city hall, and get current maps. Possibly get a list of existing hunting licenses and recent applications, so we can start screening those for hunter movements.”

“And interactive crowd-sourced mapping,” Stiles says. “ _Advanced natural-language search algorithms._ ”

“The thing is,” Scott calls from the kitchen, where he’s unpacking their weapons, “Neither of us are going to take off unless you promise to not run off and try and find the Hales.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Okay, fine, I promise.”

“Scott, we’ve been through how many apocalypses?” Lydia says. “He _lies_. Like the cheapest of cheap nineties-import rugs.”

“Look, what is the problem? We’re dividing and conquering, we’re being efficient, just because we’re here years before shit goes down doesn’t mean that we should procrastinate,” Stiles says, spinning around to face Lydia. “Scott’s gonna do current security and make first contact, you’re gonna set early alarms, and given that we’re talking download speeds in _byte_ terms, Lydia, I totally have time to just see where our fave historically significant—”

Lydia recrosses her arms, just to emphasize how very unimpressed she is with this particular line of bullshit. “Stiles. Being the first to laugh at Derek’s horrific childhood haircuts does not make up for losing weeks of time because they think we’re psychotic crazy people who don’t care about them beyond using them as chess pieces.”

“Well, at least I’m honest,” Stiles says. 

Her face tightens. Lydia spends most of her time in a perpetual state of irritation these days, so when she actually works up the energy to be fully angry, it’s something to take notice of.

Stiles thinks about adding a shrug, doesn’t, and just sits and waits for her. She stares at him, as a background scuffle tells them Scott’s gotten worried enough to come out and check, and her lips thin, then plump back out as she purses them. Then she turns her head, just enough so that he doesn’t quite see how she transitions from anger to the weary concern she’s showing when she looks back at him.

“Just get off that brick and come with me,” she says. “We might as well go to the sheriff’s office too, and get that over with.”

Scott starts to say something, but falters when Stiles gets to his feet. “Okay, fine,” Stiles says.

Lydia narrows her eyes, but she doesn’t ask. She does tuck her hand into Stiles’ arm as he walks around her, and then leans on that as they both pick their way out through the cables.

“Are you going by the hospital?” Scott says, when they’re almost at the front door.

Stiles grimaces, then starts to look back over his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Lydia rubbing at the side of her face. He stops and looks at her, and she shakes her head without looking up.

“We can,” Stiles finally says.

“Just…if this is one where she’s there, just…leave her a coffee for me, would you?” Scott says. He looks at Stiles, eyes a little bright and not with werewolf glow, but his gaze doesn’t waver, and his shoulders don’t hunch, and generally he just owns the fact that he’s having a little emotional moment.

But then, Scott’s never been too embarrassed about those, even back before he got bitten and they were just dumb, regular teenagers. Stiles wishes Scott wasn’t like that and is grateful that he is, and gets all twisted up for a second before he takes a deep breath and just remembers they’ve got practice at this. They’re good at it now. “Yeah, sure,” he says.

“Thanks,” Scott says. He shifts back towards the kitchen, then stops again. “Oh, hey, so…I was going to swing by the supermarket on the way home—”

“Did you swap your bills?” Lydia immediately says.

“Yeah, I checked,” Scott says easily, unoffended. “Anyway, any requests?”

Lydia starts to shake her head, then pauses. She tilts her head and frowns. “Do you remember if Greek yogurt is around yet?”

“Nope, but Starbucks is here so we know we can get frappucinos,” Stiles says.

Scott looks about as disgusted as he ever gets, which means he grimaces and makes a half-hearted attempt to not look sad. “Stiles, every time we get you one of those, somebody dies.”

“We have _dial-up_ ,” Stiles says. “If I don’t get caffeine jitters, I’m going to kill myself before my stuff downloads.”

“Okay, fine, I’ll…I’ll grab soda or something,” Scott mutters, disappearing back into the kitchen. “Chicken okay? I don’t think the oven works, but the stovetop’s fine. And I’ll get veg for stir-fry?”

“Whatever,” Stiles says as Lydia drags him out the door. “It’s not like we’ll be entertaining any time soon, Scott. You don’t have to cook for a crowd yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So despite the frequent technology jokes, I'm not going to guarantee that I've rooted out every anachronism. Anyway, the trio can bring tech with them and/or liberate it from convenient top-secret government labs before it gets to the point of mass-production.


	2. Chapter 2

Peter wakes up to the tune of his snarling, desperately famished stomach, and sniffing in three distinctly different keys. He freezes, his claws popping out, and then relaxes as his sister’s scent washes over him. Then the thrum of her heartbeat, though it sounds like there’s at least one wall between them.

He opens his eyes and three children are staring down at him. “Your belly is scaring Cora,” says the boy.

Cora, the youngest, is barely old enough to stand, and she’s leaning against the boy’s shoulder while stuffing the ends of her hair into her mouth and chewing on them. She doesn’t look, smell, or sound scared.

“Uncle…Peter?” says the oldest child, as if the words don’t quite fit in her mouth. They all smell like Talia’s children, but she’s the only one who looks remotely familiar. Even if it’s familiar in the strange, unsettling way of someone stretched a foot taller than Peter remembers. “Mom said when you woke up, you can have this.”

She plops a plastic container in front of Peter, on the…Peter’s on a bed. He rolls over, then pushes himself up and looks around, and finds that they’re in what appears to be a decent hotel suite. They’re taking up the bedroom portion, while Talia—he can see her knees just through the doorway—is sitting on the couch and talking on the phone to someone in the other half.

Peter’s stomach picks that moment to grind down on itself, making him wince and grab at it. The boy frowns, then elbows aside Cora to pick up the plastic container and hold it out to Peter, who takes it, and has his fingers halfway into the steamed chicken breast it’s holding when something pokes at his hand: a plastic fork.

“Ah,” Peter says, taking that from Laura. And then he shovels most of the breast into his mouth, barely remembering to chew it into pieces that won’t choke him.

“Wow, have you not eaten lately?” Laura says.

“Peter?” Talia says. A moment later she appears in the doorway.

He freezes with the last piece of chicken halfway to his mouth. His sister is…she looks strange, is the first thing he thinks. Her hair’s slipping out of a bun, which she never wears; she likes her hair loose. She’s wearing _jeans_. And she sags a little, looking at him, like she’s actually glad to see him.

“You’re up,” she says, crossing the room. She picks up Cora, gives the toddler a firm pat on the back, and then hands the burping child to an obviously disgusted Laura. Then she sits down by Peter and puts her arm around him, and doesn’t seem to notice he nearly smears her shoulder with the chicken before she hugs him.

Peter sinks into the embrace before he quite knows what he’s doing. He drops the chicken and grabs Talia’s arm, and he might still push her off at that point, except that she suddenly twists her head and starts rubbing her cheek against his throat, making short rumbling noises that are a little too disjointed to be true purrs. And he—he just—sister, pack, he smells her and then he’s got his hands fisted in the back of her shirt, pressing his face into her shoulder as hard as he can.

“I’m going to kill our parents,” Talia mutters after a few seconds. She moves her head, clears her throat, and then moves it back so her cheek is just resting against Peter’s neck, not moving. Her hand’s stroking the back of his head and it feels a little juvenile but it also feels very reassuring and he…doesn’t really want to deal with his pride right now. “What were they think—how long were you down there? _Why_ were you down there, why—”

“What are you doing here?” Peter asks, making himself pull back.

Talia’s arms shift as if she might stop him, and then she takes them from around him. She looks tense. “I didn’t call because I didn’t want—I wanted to talk to them. Peter, isn’t there a phone in the basement? Why didn’t you call me, if you were having—”

“Well, how am I supposed to know which number you use these days?” Peter snaps. “I don’t even know how many kids you have.”

Talia’s lips thin. She’s angry, and then she ducks her head and a red flush goes over her cheek and…and Peter stares for a second, because his older sister, his sister the alpha who was even alpha enough to tell their parents to shove it and to leave the pack…she looks genuinely ashamed.

“I thought he was our uncle,” says a small voice.

They both jump, and then Talia tries to push a lock of hair out of her eyes and only ends up pulling out more strands from her bun. She grimaces and shakes her fingers free, then looks up just as Laura gives her brother a patronizing pat on the head. “He is, it’s just _you_ never met him,” she says.

“Laura,” Talia says. She seems about to scold the girl, and then she just shakes her head. “Laura, can you take Derek and Cora and go into the other room for a little while? You can watch TV.”

“Derek?” Peter says.

The boy perks up, and then makes himself dead weight as Laura drags him and his sister out the door. Not that Laura’s any less curious, but she doesn’t protest. Possibly because she’s now old enough to realize she can eavesdrop anyway, Peter thinks, noting the rather shifty look on Laura’s face, and the way she deliberately doesn’t touch the door.

“Yes, and the last one is Cora,” Talia says. She’s a little curt, but when Peter looks over, Talia isn’t looking at him. She’s staring at the floor—after a second, she bends over and picks up the dropped piece of chicken to toss into the trashcan, but that can’t have been what had her attention. “That’s it.”

Peter honestly has no idea what to say, so he just nods.

“That’s going to be it,” Talia adds in a low, bitter voice. She pauses, then starts to twist her hands together in her lap. “Mark and I aren’t—we aren’t.”

“Oh,” Peter says. When she doesn’t say anything, and…still doesn’t say anything, he starts shifting against the bed. Then catches himself, and at least changes over to just squeezing the edge of the mattress. “Is that—is that why you came to see Mom and Dad?”

Talia finally looks up. The tail end of a flash of anger is still going through her eyes, though she makes an effort to try and chase it off when she realizes Peter’s noticed. “It…I already told them, Peter. I—I called, and got Mom, and…she said she’d tell Dad and she hung up, and I haven’t heard from them since. Or you, and I thought you would’ve…so that’s why I came. I thought if you weren’t even going to needle me…”

“…you’d come and pick a fight till our parents said I told you he’d run off on you, and you got to say it was worth anyway?” Peter says, a sarcastic chuckle slipping out.

It’s an accident. He honestly doesn’t want to antagonize Talia—he still has a hard time believing he’s out of the basement, and with their parents…well, he understands why she left, he’s never held that against her. And…and Talia doesn’t get flustered, or offended, or do anything except just look at Peter like he’s right. Which worries him. He hasn’t seen her in a while, but…that’s not her.

“I didn’t know,” Peter finally says. “Mom didn’t tell—well, she didn’t tell me before they left, but then, they haven’t told me anything for years. And they told me to stop talking to you.”

Talia’s eyes redden, and then she turns her head away. She takes a deep breath, putting her hand up near her face. Then looks at that. Flexes her claws, pulls them in, and turns back to Peter with a too-calm face. “I thought so, but…you usually sneak around things like that.”

“Well, I try, but even I can only do so much when—anyway, you wanted to know about the phone,” Peter says. “Somebody cut all the lines, and the power.”

“Before or after our parents left?” Talia says, after a long pause.

He reeks, Peter absently notes. No wonder the children were sniffing like that. “After. I…what day is it?”

“Wednesday.” Talia’s hand twitches towards Peter, then abruptly presses into the stretch of mattress between them. “The twelfth.”

“It’s been…five days,” Peter mutters. The bed is shaking, and then he realizes that his knee is jiggling. He puts his hand on it to try and make it stop. “There were some strange things in the preserve, and they were looking into it, and they didn’t come back.”

“Strange things?” Talia says.

“I don’t know, Dad wouldn’t say and Mom wouldn’t let me see,” Peter says irritably. “We had dinner Thursday and they went out, and they weren’t back for breakfast. But it’s not like that’s…I went to school, came home, they still weren’t back. And then when I tried to go out—I kept running into hunters.”

Talia sucks in her breath. “At the house?”

“No…no, out in the preserve. They didn’t come up to the house, but I couldn’t get that far without tripping over one, so I went home and the phones didn’t work and the power was off,” Peter says. He glances at Talia, then waves her off when he thinks he sees her starting to ask something. “I wasn’t going to _stay_ , I’m not stupid. But I was going to grab some things from the basement—you know, useful things like our only copy of the _Necronomicon_ —and…and you’re not going to believe me, but there was something that kept trying to get me. It wouldn’t let me leave.”

He looks at her again. She’s looking back, and doesn’t look skeptical yet, but she looks confused. And worried, her body twisted as if she’s debating getting up.

“What was it?” she says.

“I don’t know,” Peter says. “I never got a good look at it. It was always on the other side of the door, or the—but it wouldn’t let me go, and I tried, Talia. Every time I did, it’d snap at me and—I saw it was a lot bigger, all right?”

“So it has teeth,” Talia says after a second. “What about the eyes? Did they—”

“They were red, but if it was another alpha I would’ve just said so,” Peter snaps. He runs his hand over the side of his head, then grimaces as his stomach starts to growl again. That piece of chicken hadn’t been that big. “It wasn’t a werewolf. I couldn’t smell anything, and it wouldn’t talk, and—did you see anything?”

Talia starts to reply, then stops. She’s looking hard at Peter and he can’t quite tell what for, and it’s making him uncomfortable. It’s odd, but he doesn’t think she’s trying to tell if he’s lying, and he can’t think of why else she’d look at him like that.

“I heard a heartbeat that wasn’t you, but that was it. But I didn’t like it, so I didn’t look that much,” she finally says. She presses her lips together, then shakes her head once, sharply. Then she puts her hands on her knees and gets up, turning back to hook him by the arm. “All right, well, you go shower. I’m going to order up room service for you and the kids, and then I need to go out and talk to our Emissary. I’ll bring you back some clothes.”

“Are you going back to the house?” Peter immediately says.

“No. Peter, you’re filthy and you look like you haven’t eaten in five days, let alone what your stomach sounds like,” Talia says, finally starting to sound like the bossy sister he remembers. “You need to—”

“We need to get our things,” Peter says. “Who knows if Mom and Dad are coming back now, and the hunters are—”

Talia huffs and pushes him towards the bathroom. He stumbles across the threshold, but catches the jamb and is swinging himself back when she grabs him by the shoulder. “Peter. I’ll take care of it,” Talia says. “Now just…just take care of yourself, would you? I just got here, and I need to figure out what’s going on, and—and I’m still furious about finding you down there, so please don’t make it worse. Can you do that for me?”

“Are you going to be here when I get out of the shower?” Peter says.

He sounds whiny. He hates how he sounds, and wishes he could take it back as soon as the words leave his mouth. And when his sister looks at him like that, like she’s sorry too and like she wants to just pull him into another hug, he hates her a little too.

She probably sees that. Talia he used to know would have hugged him anyway; this Talia chews her lip, glances towards the other room, and then reluctantly lets him go. “I can’t order clothes through the hotel,” she mutters, her hand straying up to push at her hair. “All right. All right, I’ll be here when you’re done washing off, so long as you don’t spend the whole night in there. I can call them and—”

“Who’s our Emissary?” Peter says. “How did you find out? I thought they wouldn’t tell you either.”

“They wouldn’t, but I found out,” Talia says, and for a second she and Peter lock eyes and Peter feels almost—like they’re on the same page. 

But then Talia gets that hesitant look, the one she has whenever she has special alpha knowledge he doesn’t, and Peter can’t help a frustrated huff as he jerks himself around. “Fine, I’ll be quick,” he mutters. “ _You’re_ the one with the long hair.”

“You’re the one with the hair that needs special conditioner,” Talia says, reaching out.

He bats her hand away from his head. Talia draws back, looking a little hurt, and then she shrugs and walks into the next room. Peter hovers in the bathroom doorway, feeling more than a little sore himself, and then he sniffs himself again. Snorts that right back out, and reaches for the nearest towel.

* * *

Stiles and Lydia make their stops, and cajole and bribe and sneak their way into getting to the records that they need, and then they go do some shopping. Because being a time traveler does not automatically get you TARDIS-level roominess and if you can only take so much baggage, you’re going to prioritize the stuff that won’t be invented for another decade. Which means you need clothes and housewares and whatever.

“Toaster oven or hairdryer?” Stiles says.

“Hairdryer,” Lydia says, putting a box for a much pricier model into the cart. “You’re not using mine to dehydrate your trophies again, and you know Scott always sets fire to things in the toaster oven.”

“Okay, one, they’re not trophies, they’re very rare ingredients that need to be properly prepared unless you want me to set fire to a lot more than our mini pizzas. Two…check out eight o’clock,” Stiles says. “Is it just me, or is this town crawling with shadiness?”

She looks at him.

“Out-of-towner shadiness,” Stiles clarifies.

Still looking at him.

“Out-of-towner shadiness that can’t just be around for a random hunt because they are buying _shovels_ and all the household hazardous chemicals for corpse-disposal, and last I checked, they didn’t bother with that shit,” Stiles hisses at her. “They just left bodies lying around to get poor local law officials unfairly booted out of office for terrible crime rates.”

Lydia raises a brow, and then dumps an armful of towels into the cart and leans way, way over to hiss into Stiles’ face while she’s at it. “I thought we were letting _Scott_ look into them.”

He looks at her.

“Why does the Beacon Hills Wal-Mart sell quicklime anyway?” Lydia mutters, shaking her head. “That can’t be legal here. They card for ammunition sales.”

“Come on, you know you missed this town,” Stiles says, grabbing their cart.

They do a quick stroll by the pair of shopping hunters. Lydia hitches up her miniskirt, hunters look, and Stiles flicks a magicked burr seed onto the nearer hunter’s bag for tracking purposes. Then they check out, head out to their car, and load it up as slowly as possible so they’re still around when the hunters come out. It’s a different pair than before, so Stiles pretends he’s an idiot and doesn’t see the cart corral two spaces down from their car so he can go by the hunter’s car and stick an extra tracker on it.

“Scott texted,” Lydia says when Stiles climbs into their car. “Says he’s followed three groups, he doesn’t think they’re heading for the Hale house. He thinks they’re looking for something or somebody, but not there.”

Stiles nods and pulls out his non-touchscreen phone, and then he frowns when he sees the time. “School’s out.”

“Are we really going to be the creepy adults this time?” Lydia says.

The funny thing about time travel is, they still age, but God knows how old they actually are. They had to fiddle with the electronics so those can’t really keep track, not without burning themselves out trying to synch with a world that no longer exists, and sure, a day in any timeline still feels like a day, but they have no way of knowing how that matches up with their original time. For all Stiles knows, he’s well beyond the point where he can rightfully call himself a pervy old man.

“We’re only creepy if we’re creeping on the kids,” Stiles says. “I’m pretty sure we decided to give up on them last timeline, and just deal with the adults. Seeing as, you know, Laura should be barely old enough to understand the concept of time travel, so I hope you weren’t thinking we were going to explain this shit to her and Derek and Cora.”

Lydia hums dismissively, and then she suddenly looks at Stiles. “What if the Hales don’t exist this time?” she says. She pauses, her eyes wide and strangely…edgy, and then she pushes herself up in her seat. “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Well, but we still have Argent-trained hunters running around,” Stiles points out. “And if they’re not after the Hales, then they’re after some equally clueless family and they’re just irrevocably genocidal, I thought we’d figured that out.”

“ _You_ figured,” Lydia says sharply, and then she twists roughly back, crossing her arms as she sinks into the seat. She stares out through the windshield as Stiles slowly pulls the car out, then abruptly looks at him. “I know you get tired of this.”

“And now you’re going to say, Stiles, don’t you ever just want to take a timeline off? You didn’t even really like any of the Hales anyway, Cora was traumatized and mean, Derek was traumatized and mean and violent, Laura died a lot and Peter was psychotic however you cut his sympathy ploys,” Stiles says. He generously lets another car cut into the line out of the parking lot, and then pulls up as the hunters pull in behind them. “Don’t you just want to let them go, and live your own life for once?”

Lydia’s silent for the three and a half minutes it takes for them to maneuver out of the lot and onto the street. Her head turns as Stiles changes lanes and she watches the hunters drive past them. “Actually, I was going to say, if we’re going to do this again, I’m not going to watch you passive-aggressive all over everybody just because you’re unhappy about something you don’t have to do. Scott and I could have left you back in that—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Stiles drums a little along the steering wheel, coasting up to a stoplight, and then he takes a deep breath. Turns and looks Lydia in the eye. “And I’m glad you didn’t. Really.”

“Really,” she says.

“Really, I am,” Stiles says. He takes another deep breath, then slouches back so one hand slips off the wheel onto his leg. “I know it looked like I was happy, but…I was just ignoring things, Lyds. I was trying to fake it till it works, but if it’s really…you shouldn’t have to make it work. It should just work.”

Lydia snorts. She’s still looking out front but the half of her mouth he can see is bent into a smile. “Says the people who don’t exist in this timeline.”

“Not existing doesn’t mean we don’t have a place, and do you really want me to get into metaphysics now?” Stiles says.

“Well, if you’re not, you might want to turn,” Lydia says.

Stiles does so, without thinking, because that’s how they are. Then he looks and realizes where they’re going now, and he laughs. “I thought we weren’t going to the school?”

“We weren’t when I didn’t think you were in shape for it,” Lydia says, shrugging. Then she reaches down between the seats and pulls something out and into her lap, and starts manipulating it with a series of metal clicks. “You know, if there are this many hunters this early, it’s probably for the best that none of us have to worry about any parents. We haven’t been here a whole day and it’s already looking messy.”

“Is…that a prediction, or a promise?” he says, looking at her, and at the gun she’s got.

Lydia shrugs again, her eyes sweeping over to take in the school parking lot. It’s late enough that all the buses are gone, but a fair number of cars are still there, along with some parents and children on the front steps, and the odd teacher wandering here and there.

And a pair of hunters, as if two men sitting silently in a car and not doing anything isn’t suspicious. Then again, it’s Beacon Hills, nobody’s paying much attention to the car. They’re certainly not keeping the kids away from it: a couple running after a ball go right in front of the car, then walk back across, chatting and kicking the ball to each other and completely ignoring the men.

Stiles cruises down the street, then parks when he finds a conveniently nondescript side-road. Then he gets his bag from the back, and he and Lydia get out and walk back towards the school.

* * *

Peter doesn’t spend a lot of time in the shower on purpose. He likes to treat himself, and he thinks he’s done quite well in the physical appearance area—one of the few no-strings gifts his parents gave him—but he’s not obsessive about it.

It’s just, well, the basement isn’t exactly a living area. They use it for storage, and because of the kinds of things they store down there, it’s hard to clean well, and the house is surrounded by woods. It’s dirty, and he had to save the water for drinking, and he can’t help it if he has to wait ten minutes before the water even starts to run clear.

He can help that it takes him another ten minutes to towel off, but the basement didn’t exactly have much in the way of cushioning, and just because he’s a werewolf doesn’t mean he finds stone floors comfortable. So he takes a few minutes to just plush his face into the towels. He’s had a bad week.

Anyway, by the time he pads out of the bathroom, one of those indecently cuddly towels wrapped around his waist, Talia’s still fussing with her children and nowhere near ready to leave.

Well, that’s what Peter thinks, and then Cora burbles nonsensically and crawls towards one corner, only to whimper as Laura darts forward and snatches her back. Peter turns and sees the man standing there.

He jumps a little, because he hadn’t picked up another heartbeat, and then calms down. A second later, he realizes he did that because Talia had purred at him, but he doesn’t have time to even react to that discovery, because the man sighs and takes something off his wrist and then rubs at his head. 

“I don’t know what to tell you, I’m still just an apprentice,” says the man. To Talia, although he’s also eyeing Peter.

“This is Alan Deaton,” Talia says to Peter. She sits down on the couch—she must have redone her bun at some point, because it’s unraveling in the other direction—and pulls Laura, who’s still carrying Cora, over to one side of her. Then she looks back at this Deaton. “What do you mean, Tyler’s gone? He’s the damn _Emissary_. You’re a secretive bunch but you’re not that—”

Deaton looks uncomfortable. He’s a lot younger than Peter would have expected, somewhere in his twenties, maybe even younger than Talia. “It’s tradition when a pack changes alphas.”

Both Peter and Talia freeze.

“That’s not—I told you, I don’t know what happened to your parents. I’ve only just arrived in town myself,” Deaton says. “But that’s what Tyler told me when I asked why he was leaving.”

“How would he know?” Peter can’t help asking. “And if he knows that, then he has to know where they are—”

“Was it his fault?” Talia demands. Her eyes are halfway to red and her voice is dropping, turning gravelly. “If he wouldn’t stay to tell me himself, that doesn’t look very good, does it.”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Deaton says. He smells genuinely distressed. And nervous, especially when Peter abruptly moves.

Peter actually isn’t trying to scare him, though Talia flicks him a disapproving look. And then she notices the real reason, which is the small boy who is inexplicably snuggling Peter’s left leg. “You smell better now,” Derek whispers, looking up at Peter with ridiculously round eyes. “You’re an uncle, I don’t think uncles should smell bad.”

“Yes, well, I…here, just…” Peter takes a shuffling step over, then muffles a curse as the towel starts to slide down. He grabs at that and then takes another step towards the couch.

He tries to push Derek off, but the child is unbelievably clingy and so Peter ends up just dragging both of them till he reaches the nearer couch arm. Then he pivots to angle Derek towards Talia, but Talia’s gone back to staring at Deaton.

“Did you visit the house?” she says.

“Of course not,” Deaton says.

Talia raises her brows. “Why not?”

“I…we’re not supposed to make ourselves known except to the alpha,” Deaton says, clearly flustered. “I knew you hadn’t arrived yet, and—”

“Did you know I had a younger brother who lived there?” Talia says.

Peter pauses halfway to perching himself on the couch arm. Deaton looks at him, then at Talia. “Yes, I did, but I don’t see—”

“Get out,” Talia says. She pauses, and then, when Deaton just gives her a dumb look, she smiles with fangs showing. “Like you said, when the alpha needs you…well, if I do, I’ll call again.”

“I’m sorry,” Deaton says. He looks as if he’s struggling to say more, and then he awkwardly walks towards the door.

The moment he’s gone, Talia heaves out a sigh and drops her head into her hands. She moves her head a little when Cora starts tugging at her hair, but otherwise just seems sunk into place, shoulders slumped, scent flat.

“Does that mean they’re dead?” Peter finally asks.

“Mom?” Laura says, voice high and nervous. “Did somebody die? Did we know them?”

“Sweetheart, please, not—can you just take care of—” Talia starts, only to grab at Cora as Laura shoves the baby off her lap and onto Talia’s.

“You always make me do it! I’m tired!” Laura suddenly cries. She jumps off the couch and runs into the bedroom. The door swings a little in her wake, but she hasn’t tried to shut it, just caught it with a limb. Anyway, Peter still has a clear view of her throwing herself onto the bed.

“She’s loud,” Derek informs Peter.

Talia looks after Laura, absently tucking Cora against her chest—Cora seems to be fine, and is quite content with her better angle at Talia’s hair—and then slowly drops back against the couch. “God,” she mutters.

“Yes…” Peter says, half to Derek, half to his sister. He nudges Derek again and for some reason his nephew decides to release his leg. Peter stumbles, barely remembering to do it away from Derek, and then spots a shopping bag near the door.

“Oh, right, those are your—at least he managed to do that,” Talia mutters, watching Peter retrieve it. She lifts her hand and presses it against the side of her face. “If they aren’t dead, I might just kill them.”

Peter only half-hears her, busy digging out the clothes the bag holds. Nondescript and unfashionable, but not ugly, sized more or less right, though both the hoodie and the jeans are baggy. “So that’s our Emissary?”

“If I want one, which I’m not sure I do,” Talia says. Then she half-catches herself from saying something.

When Peter looks up, he finds Derek staring at him from the other side of the bag. Derek looks at him through the twisted-paper handles, then ducks and sticks his head into the bag, sniffing. Peter doesn’t object, and Derek’s still sniffing when Peter comes back to the couch and sits by his sister.

“Tyler was Dad’s,” Talia says after a moment, pushing at her hair. “Tyler Dardell.”

“The vet with the animal shelter?” Peter says. Then he groans. “Well, that makes perfect sense. I can’t believe I didn’t…”

“I found out when I had Laura. The hospital took her blood for the usual tests, and I caught him stealing it, and he told me he was checking up on her for Mom,” Talia adds. She pauses again. “He also told me if I kept quiet, he’d try and help me out and get our parents to stop fighting me over Mark.”

“You believed that?” Peter says.

Talia looks at him and he sees a flicker of her old annoyance, and then she just reaches out and brushes back a curl that’s stuck to his forehead. “That was back when I really thought they might get over it, at least because Laura turned out an alpha too. Anyway, I stopped talking to him when we left.”

Peter wonders why she couldn’t have let him know anyway, and then bites down on that. He wads up the towel he’d been using and tosses it between his hands, then looks at her. “Is it really just the alpha who knows about them? If we called, I don’t know, Uncle Carlo…”

“Honestly, Peter, we don’t know if our parents are even alive, is this really the time to be curious?” Talia suddenly snaps.

“I—I just meant we could find Tyler that way and see what he knows,” Peter says, caught off-guard.

Talia stills, and then she looks guilty. She pulls her hand in towards her, then pushes it back out and gives Peter an awkward pat on the shoulder. “No, that’s…no, it’s not a bad idea…”

“But you don’t like it,” Peter says. His initial shock’s faded enough for him to be irritated with her.

“It’s not that I don’t like it, Peter, it’s—look, if I don’t want to use your idea, it’s not because I hate you. You know I love you,” Talia says. “You’re my brother.”

“Well, but you left me,” Peter snaps.

Then he winces. He knows better than to give up valuable information, and giving somebody the key to your feelings about them is about as valuable as it gets. And damn it, he’s almost old enough to not have to worry about silly Child Services if he decides to just run off like his sister, he should be able to keep a secret about himself.

“Yeah,” Talia says, which startles Peter out of his black mood. “I know. I’m sorry. I—it was hard enough prying Laura away from them, and I didn’t actually want to kill either of our parents, Peter. But…I know.”

She looks at Peter and she’s got that bone-deep weary look again, as if, somehow, her alpha power’s been eroded away and just left a sister with frazzled hair and early worry lines around her eyes and mouth. And for some odd reason, he feels guilty, even though none of that is his fault. Well, maybe not guilty, but…uncomfortable, and definitely in the same ball-park.

“You didn’t have to kill them to take me,” Peter says. Then he frowns as Talia laughs harshly. “Re—really?”

“You didn’t hear Dad,” Talia mutters, rubbing at her face. “I don’t—I don’t even know, to be honest, but back then I didn’t want to—you were too young, and Laura was a baby, and—anyway, it doesn’t really matter. And we can’t call any of the relatives, Peter. If we call them, they’ll realize our _alpha_ is missing. Do you have any idea what will happen then?”

To be honest, Peter hadn’t thought that far ahead, and he’s embarrassed to realize that. “Oh. Right, they’ll…but you’re alpha now. The druids seem to think that.”

“Nobody actually listens to the druids. You know, I realized that when I was away—we have them around but we don’t ever use their advice, and…well, trust me, Carlo and Teresa and David aren’t going to give a damn what this Deaton says,” Talia says.

“Well, true, he’s not that impressive,” Peter says. “And just an apprentice.”

Talia looks at him, and then she snorts. Then she puts her hand on her face again, but to muffle her laugh. Peter’s a little surprised, but then he can’t help thinking he’s a lot more comfortable when she looks like that.

“Look, I just think we’d better keep it quiet till we have a better idea of what’s going on,” Talia says, sobering. “I was hoping that Deaton could help us, but…no, I think better we do it ourselves. I’ll have to seal up the house—I don’t think it’s safe to stay there, right now. And then—”

“You can’t go there alone,” Peter says. “The thing—it might be back, and then if you get stuck like me…do you expect _me_ to show up and save the day?”

“Well, if you’re not going to save the day as reinforcements, how are you going to save us when you come with me?” Talia says.

Peter smacks her arm without thinking. Then he braces himself…but she just snorts again, and drapes her hand over his shoulder. “I’d have a better idea of what to look for than you,” he says. “I could warn us when it’s coming.”

Talia starts to reply, and then abruptly turns away. He has no idea what triggered it, but when he follows her gaze, he sees that Derek’s twisting the bag handles around one of his wrists. The handle isn’t tight enough to draw blood, but it’s digging deep enough into the boy’s flesh that Peter wonders whether Derek is missing a few nerves there.

“Derek, no,” Talia orders. When Derek looks blankly up, Talia sighs and gets up, and goes over to untangle him.

She tips Cora into Peter’s hands as she goes, in a move that’s so absentminded that it has to be the product of countless repetitions. Peter…Peter has honestly never held a child this young. When Laura was in the house, he wasn’t old enough to be allowed to hold her.

“Peeee-taaaaa,” Cora says, and then she blows a spit bubble at him.

Talia turns around, snickers, and then shoos Derek with her as they come back to the couch. “Don’t be offended, or turn this into a drama queen moment, because no, I’m not assuming you’re going to do it, Peter. But who’s going to watch the children? Someone has to.”

The spit bubble doesn’t get anywhere near Peter. It floats up, circles back, and lands on Cora’s nose. She goes cross-eyed till it pops, and then she starts wiggling, her tiny sneakers poking repeatedly into his thighs. It takes a moment for him to realize she’s using him as a trampoline.

“They don’t seem that destructive,” he says.

“I should make you watch them just for that,” Talia says. Then she sits down, and takes Derek’s hands in her own. She starts raising and lowering his arms as he giggles, and Peter gradually comes to understand that Derek is dancing with her. “I don’t want to just leave them in the car again. I wouldn’t have done that in the first place if I’d known hunters were around.”

“Well, lucky me, then,” Peter says.

Talia stops, and then she lets go of Derek’s hands. She turns and takes Cora away, too, and then she takes Peter by the shoulders and twists him even though he’s already looking at her. “Peter, you little idiot, I will _always_ come get you. When I left with Mark, that was the last—I’m never doing that again, you understand? Never. If I don’t come back for you, then _that’s_ how you know I’m gone.”

And then she hugs him. It hurts, she’s not minding her strength, but Peter…hurts inside too, this sudden upwards pressure against the very ribs creaking under Talia’s arm. He knows his sister loves him, but he’s old enough to know that love takes on many different forms, and some types aren’t worth anything in a world where everyone’s a potential hunter. And he just—he was thinking the way his sister loved him…

…he doesn’t want to cave too easily, and not just because of pride. But Talia keeps hugging him and he moves his hands, and then somehow they end up on her back as he tucks his head into her neck.

“Missed you,” he says. “I missed so…you have three _kids_.”

“I know, I know, I missed you too, I wish I’d tried to talk to you more, no matter what they did,” Talia says into his hair.

“They’re all _tiny_ , even Laura,” Peter says. “Are you feeding them enough?”

Talia holds him. Then squeezes him, deliberately, before pushing back. “You little twerp,” she says fondly. “You’re still not taller than me, so you can’t talk. Now look, we need to…let’s just figure out how to clean up here, and then we need to get to somewhere safe where we can really think this through.”

Peter nods, and then they both look up as a noise comes from the bedroom doorway. “Are you going out?” Laura says suspiciously.

“I don’t know, are you going to throw another tantrum?” Peter says.

“Peter,” Talia says sharply.

Laura ignores her mother, narrowing her eyes at him. “Will it work on you?”

“Is she old enough to be that sarcastic?” Peter says after a second, looking back at Talia.

“I can hear you two talking, you know, I have alpha ears,” Laura announces, just a little imperious. She stalks into the room and then drops forward to bat at a completely oblivious Derek. “Mom, Derek’s licking the carpet again.”

“It’s salty,” Derek whines as Talia, flushing, promptly pulls him up. “I’m hungry again.”

“Do you want to cough up hairballs like a _cat_?” Peter says to the boy, who thinks it over and then makes a grossed-out face. “Come to think of it, I thought you were ordering room service?”

Talia starts to look annoyed, and then she drops her head back and blows out her breath towards the ceiling. “Dam—darn it, I was, but Deaton showed up and…well, all right, fine, we’ll go out and get dinner, that’ll be faster at this point. There’s a diner across the street and I don’t think any hunters are going to pick fights in this part of town, it’s too busy.”

“I think you’d be surprised,” Peter mutters.

 _He’s_ surprised when instead of simply brushing that off, Talia stops halfway off the couch and looks at him. “Do you mean that?” she says.

Peter blinks, and then really thinks about it. “I…which hotel is this?”

“You know what, we’ll just check out. I didn’t even unpack anyway,” Talia mutters, looking around. “We’ll check out and pack things into the car, and then go to dinner…and I still don’t want to leave the kids alone while we go to the house, but—”

“Maybe we could check them into the hospital for the night?” Peter says. “That’s still neutral, right? And Dr. Lawson still owes D—well, he owes us. Can any of them fake the flu?”

“Dr. Lawson?” Talia says, frowning. She’s silent for long enough that Peter starts to remind her who he is, but then she shakes her head. “I don’t…but it’s him or Deaton, isn’t it?”

“I can pretend to be sick,” Laura says. She’s still hovering near them, patently curious, and doing her best to thwap her brother on the head whenever his hand sneaks down to the carpet. “And Derek always throws up when he licks the carpet.”

“I do not!” Derek says, specks of lint decorating his lips.

Talia looks at her children, and then she gets up, taking Cora onto one hip as she goes. “Well, I don’t think we need to worry about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cora is about one, Derek's between three and five, and Laura is eight or nine.
> 
> Stiles, Scott, and Lydia are around twenty-one, and Talia's in her mid-to-late twenties.
> 
> I believe they flesh out the druid society stuff later on, but I haven't watched that far so I'm basically making up my own stuff there. Also, so finding actual quicklime isn't as easy as just buying the stuff which is labeled as that in your local home-construction store, apparently--Lydia's referring to the real, mystery-novel stuff, not the fertilizer stuff.


	3. Chapter 3

“Well, I think I’m worried now,” Stiles says, looking down at the semi-conscious hunter.

Lydia sighs into the hand she has over her face, then raises her head. She’s about to say something when her phone goes off. “It’s Scott,” she says, answering it and walking off.

The hunter groans and twists against the chains holding him to the tree, then cringes as Stiles walks around him, steps over the other, fully-unconscious hunter, and gets another sanitary wipe from their bag. Stiles cleans off his fingers, and then grabs one of the hunter’s guns from the pile of discarded weapons, using the wipe to rub that over too.

“No, no, please,” the hunter starts.

“Okay, look, let’s just shortcut the usual scene,” Stiles says. “I’m not gonna shoot you. I’m gonna stick you back in your car with a message for Gerard Argent, who’s totally going to ignore it and just come down swinging because he’s a bloodthirsty moron who loves to burn houses down to kill fleas.”

The hunter relaxes and Stiles shoots him in the head, then bends down and gets a nice set of fingerprints onto the gun from the other hunter. He unloads the gun, bags it and stashes it in his bag, and he’s just about to start hauling the unconscious hunter back to the car when he realizes Lydia’s looking at him.

“Guy shouldn’t have assumed I meant him,” Stiles says. “I wasn’t even looking at him.”

Lydia is unimpressed. “Scott says that he picked up a group of hunters in the preserve and this group’s heading for the Hale house.”

“Okay,” Stiles says. “Did you mention that our pair let slip that they stumbled over Hale grandparent bodies?”

“He says forget about cooking dinner, he got us some sandwiches,” she says. She puts her phone away and bends over to pick out latex gloves from Stiles’ bag, which she puts on, and a small baggie of whitish powder. She starts sprinkling around the powder, which dissolves away as soon as it touches anything. “He’ll meet us at the Hale house with them.”

Stiles grabs the unconscious guy and hauls him into back of the hunters’ SUV, and then follows that up with some of the hunters’ weapons. Then he sits down on the bumper with one of the hunters’ phones. “He already there?” he says, typing.

“The Hales aren’t,” Lydia says. “He thinks they might have been by earlier in the day, but the place is off and we should probably swing back to the rental and pick up supplies.”

“Scott said that?” Stiles says, looking up.

Lydia flicks a last pinch of powder out, and then seals up the baggie. “No, I did, since I’ll drive their car out of town. Now hurry up and get over there before Scott does something stupid, like let people let Gerard know who we are.”

“He’s gotten better about that,” Stiles says, but he finishes up his text to Gerard and then tosses Lydia the hunter’s phone.

Ten minutes later, they’re each driving away from the spot. Stiles, because he’s not stupid and Lydia is very good with long-range weapons now, goes to the rental and gets his magicking stuff, and then heads out to the Hale house.

He finds Scott on the back porch. Scott’s staring at the house, which Stiles can understand, considering this damn place is the gravity well around which their lives perpetually circulates. Most of the time it’s a wreck. Occasionally it’s rebuilt, and once or twice it’s the unburnt original, like it is now. Stiles is used to the place no matter what shape it’s in, but even so, every time he sees it for the (repeated) first time, it’s…a little strange.

“You can go in,” Scott finally says, glancing at Stiles. Then he winces, because he’s still kept his manners, and he dips to scoop up the bag at his feet. He pulls out two sandwiches and hands Stiles one. “Nothing’s locked.”

“That seems unusually careless of them, even for, well, them,” Stiles says. He pushes the paper wrapping down enough to get a bite. “Also, you’re not.”

“I went inside for a second and I don’t like it,” Scott says. He also unwraps his sandwich, but makes no move to touch it. Doesn’t look like he has an appetite at all, to be honest. “It doesn’t smell or sound or…but I think that’s it. It’s like the place is dead.”

“Deader than when it’s a pile of cinders?” Stiles says.

“No, when it’s like that, it’s…it’s creepy and haunted and I never understood why Derek kept living there,” Scott mutters. When Stiles elbows him, he finally stuffs the sandwich into his mouth, but he only gives the bite a few chews before he swallows and goes back to staring at the house. “This just feels like nothing, in a really bad way.”

Stiles nods and eats his sandwich. He is listening, and also observing, and he’s hungry and while time-travel is, weirdly, pretty good ADD therapy, it doesn’t do much to counteract low blood sugar. “So how long since the Hales were here, you think?”

“Somebody drove here this morning, and they were by the cellar, and maybe Peter was around?” Scott says. Sounds a little distracted, but that’s better than the strange, slow voice he’d been using before. “He’s the closest to what they smelled like, but…I mean, I know scent changes over time, but…I don’t know, it’s just really…”

“Well, he’s what, seventeen here?” Stiles takes one hand off his sandwich to make air quotes. “‘As humans count years.’ Whatever, he’s going through puberty, maybe that’s just the smell of immature evil.”

Scott glances at Stiles, worried and something else, something very like irony, if Scott ever decided to get into that. “He smelled really scared, actually.”

“Huh,” Stiles says, looking at the house again. He’s only got a bite left of the sandwich anyway, and…well, Peter is always some shade of manipulative, untrustworthy dick, but his sense of self-preservation is about as straightforward as he ever gets. If he’s scared of something, then it’s bad. “Which way did they drive off?”

“Town,” Scott says. Then he turns around and points at the woods. “So there’s another scent I picked up, but it’s all muddled, they’re using verbena and some other stuff to try and cover it up. And it’s weird too, it just keeps circling the house.”

Stiles checks the time on his phone, and thank God they didn’t jump so far back he’s actually got to wear a wristwatch. “Okay, well, hunter ETA is…”

“Couple hours, at least, and I set a couple tripwires,” Scott says, putting his untouched sandwich away. “You want to check that out instead of the house?”

“Whatever’s up with the house, it’s still a stationary object,” Stiles says. “I’m pretty sure it didn’t kill off the grandparents, seeing as they were five miles from here, so I think it can wait while we figure out what new-old bullshit is stalking Beacon Hills.”

Scott nods and steps off the porch, but he’s still shooting Stiles odd looks every so often. He and Lydia do get like that every once in a while—they all do. Things they don’t tell you about time travel, well, it’s as much of a stamina deal as anything else, and when you get wrung out, you get a little weird.

“You think this thing showed up before?” Scott says after a few minutes of walking. “A lot of stuff seems different here.”

“I don’t know, the school still has really shitty security,” Stiles says. “But yeah, okay, none of our parents are here, that’s different.”

Scott sucks in his breath, his hands jerking into his pockets, the way he does whenever he thinks Stiles could use a little of that werewolf pain-reliever but knows Stiles will cut him if he tries. Still, best friend across timelines, he’s a stubborn guy. “Are you okay? Really? Because—”

“Well, if he’s not here, means he can’t die,” Stiles mutters.

“I hate it when Mom’s not around, even if that means she’s safer. Kind of. I’m not sure how safe you are when you don’t even exist,” Scott says.

“You’re gonna make your head hurt with the mindscrew, I told you not to do that,” Stiles adds, kicking aside a fallen branch. “Till we get a supplier here, I gotta reserve our—hey, so you hit up Deaton?”

Scott shakes his head. “No, he wasn’t…well, he’s around, the receptionist says he works there, but he wasn’t there right then. Left early for personal reasons. Also, he’s only been here a week, Stiles, and—and wasn’t it really, really weird at the house? I mean, they’re supposed to be a big pack right now, where is everybody?”

“Mauled dead alpha and mate in the woods, unknown monster,” Stiles says.

“But that _just_ happened,” Scott says, more than a little sharp. His eyes are reddening.

Stiles stops and waits for Scott to catch himself and stumble back to meet him. “Bro, are _you_ okay?” Stiles says. “The multiverse is weird, we know this, and if you’re having weird gut feelings about jumping back this far—”

“It’s just, don’t you ever wonder when we’ll know to stop?” Scott says suddenly. He pulls at his hair with one hand, turning slightly in place, and then sighs and goes up to a nearby tree, checking over the trunk. “I mean, we started doing this to help, right? And I want to keep doing that, but sometimes when we jump, it’s just…it’s just _so_ different, it just doesn’t feel like…like we’re making things right, you know. It feels like we’re in a completely different story.”

“Yeah, well, is that totally bad?” Stiles says. Then he raises his hand before Scott can sigh again at his flippancy. “Look, Scotty, we’re already being interventionist as hell, and I know I’m the go-to guy for moral shades of gray, but…that’s a lost cause. And we’re still helping, aren’t we? Hey, even if they’re not the Hales but the Johnsons or whatever, we save them from hunters and we’re still helping somebody, right?”

Scott crouches down by the tree, half-heartedly trying to pretend he’s analyzing whatever special werewolf tracks. “We are, but…”

Then Stiles gets it, and sighs himself. “Okay, for the umpteenth time, and I say that with utmost love because exasperation’s how you know somebody cares—that shit wasn’t your fault, Scott. Sometimes people just want to die.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, I just…I don’t know, we’re so far back this time, I just keep thinking we don’t even know all the things that happened in between, and even when we do, sometimes it just doesn’t…” Scott’s mutter trails off. He frowns the trunk, then prods a finger into what looks like unscarred bark to Stiles. “Never mind. Anyway, so here, I know you can’t see, but I can smell—”

Their phones ring, one after the other. And then Stiles’ disconnects when he tries to answer it. He swears and hits redial, only to get…he pulls the phone down and rolls his eyes when he sees he has no bars. The preserve isn’t actually that big, but stupid retro lack of wireless coverage. “That Lydia for you, too?”

“Yeah, no bars,” Scott says. He stands back up and cocks his head, then shrugs. “Well, we’ve still got nobody, and I know I get reception out by the entrance. You want me to run us over there?”

“Go, speed racer, go,” Stiles says, hauling himself onto Scott’s obliging back, piggyback-style.

* * *

Talia has no real personal issue with Theodore Lawson. He’s been reasonably good about holding up his end of his deal with the Hales, and he’s certainly managed to keep his mouth shut about their being werewolves for over a decade.

But he was her parents’ arrangement, and she’s long since learned that any contact of her parents invariably has their interests at heart; even if regular people had the faintest conception of _pack_ , her parents rarely encouraged their children to develop connections, instead teaching them that the best thing to do was to route someone to the alpha. Never mind that since Talia was born, there were two of them, and…but that’s water under the bridge.

Probably permanently, though Talia doesn’t quite touch that thought yet, not ready to sort through her feelings on it. Instead she concentrates on looking as unconcerned as she can, as she strokes Derek’s hair back from his head. “Peter and I will be back soon,” she says. “And you’ll be here with Laura and Cora, and they have plenty of toys, Derek, don’t you want to see what they have?”

“He’s gonna cry,” Laura predicts, from where she’s sitting with Cora. At least she seems to have gotten over her fit, and is reasonably preoccupied with playing patty-cake with Cora.

“Am not,” Derek sniffles. Then he grabs at Talia’s sleeve as she tries to rise, and she can hear his little claws snapping threads. “Mom. Mom, are you really going to go?”

“I have to, but just for a little bit. Peter and I have to take care of something, and then we’ll be right back, and we’ll all be together,” Talia says, trying to sound reassuring. She can hear Lawson impatiently tapping his foot by the doorway—well, maybe she feels he could be a little more understanding, even if he’s a surgeon and not a pediatrician—and Peter’s already wandered off. “But I’ve got to go, so you need to be good, and take care of your sisters—”

“He can’t take care of me, I’m older,” Laura says.

Talia lets out a long exhale, or means to, and instead she growls. Her two eldest children freeze, and then Cora lurches forward and smushes her face into Laura’s front, whimpering. And Talia feels like a horrible mother, and like Sisyphus with that damned rock, and like she’s driven most of the night, found her half-starved brother, is dealing with potentially dead parents and a town crawling with hunters, and has done that all on one and a half meals.

“Cora,” Laura says, her face wrinkling in concern. She pets at Cora’s back and hair, and then suddenly hugs the toddler to her, rocking Cora slightly from side to side. “C’mon, Cora, it’s okay, it’s just Mom.”

“Laura,” Talia says, and when Laura looks up, blinking in surprise, Talia feels simultaneously worse and wonderful. “Laura, that’s…that’s a good girl. Now, I’ll be back, but—”

“I gotta watch them, I know, they’ll be good,” Laura says. She waves her hand at Derek, who’s still a little teary-eyed, but who obligingly comes over and plops down where Laura points. “Just, Mom, can—can you come back soon? Since—since Dad can’t get us?”

Talia bites down hard on her lip for a second. Then she catches herself—but the children haven’t noticed, Laura and Derek are both too busy fussing over Cora, who’s hiccupping. 

“I’ll be back as quick as I can,” Talia finally says.

She leaves immediately afterward, while she can, and then pauses in the hall to compose herself.

“I’m on shift till midnight,” Lawson reminds her. “I don’t know any of the nurses on that shift. I’ll leave a note and they won’t kick the children out, but they’ll talk.”

“Yes, I…we won’t be that long,” Talia mutters. “Thank you.”

Lawson nods and she assumes he’ll go, but then he jerks his head down the hall. “Your brother went that way. Looking for the vending machine, I’d guess.”

Talia suppresses a sigh, because after all, Peter has been without anything to eat for five days. The diner food had been unexpectedly tasty, but with three children and one of them Derek, it’d been difficult for the adults to get a decent share.

Which had been a little bit odd to see from Peter. He’s never been very good with other children, at least judging from how he was with classmates and cousins, but so far her children seem to have baffled him into playing along with them. She wonders for a moment if it was just starvation he went through, and then she feels guilty.

She also remembers what he’d said about a monster. He wasn’t lying—and they might have been separated for a few years, but she still knows his tells—but at the same time, she can’t imagine what could possibly get into their house. There are more protections on the place than just deadbolts, and even another werewolf…well, they’d leave traces. She would have smelled or seen something.

Then again, Talia thinks, she’d heard something. That other heartbeat. And their parents are autocratic, inflexible relics, but they aren’t absentminded or neglectful. Even if they aren’t dead, something has to be seriously wrong for them to have left Peter alone for so long.

“Talia,” Peter says from up the hall.

She can’t see him, he’s in an alcove, but as soon as she hears his voice, she locks in on his heartbeat and it’s too fast. Talia slows, then looks sharply around. The hallway is empty, though at the other end, a nurse pushing an empty gurney walks by. The nurse’s heartbeat is slow and regular, unconcerned.

“Hale,” says another voice, a man’s voice. “Look, we don’t want to break the Code here, but we need to get out to your house. We’ll leave your children be, but you and your brother are coming with us. Quiet. Hands where I can see them.”

Talia’s glad they can’t see each other because she has a moment of pure, blinding rage and she has no idea what she might look like just then. But—Peter sucks in a short, sharp, _hurt_ breath, and she makes herself calm down. She’s an alpha. Her children, her brother, her pack—she’ll deal with it for them.

“I’ll meet you at the car,” she says curtly, spinning on her heel.

It takes her five endless minutes to walk out of the hospital, another five to get to her car, and three more before Peter appears in the doorway, with a middle-aged, rough-edged man in a faded camouflage coat walking right behind him. The man has his hand on Peter’s shoulder up till he shoves Peter into shotgun, and then gets into the backseat.

Peter stares straight ahead, though as Talia starts the car, his hand drifts up to push at the side of his neck; she glances over and spies a healing red pinprick. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Couldn’t smell—somebody shit the bed nearby.”

“We’re not here for you, and if you just do what I say, you’ll walk out of this,” the man says. He’s firm in a lowkey, unassuming way.

“Which family are you with?” Talia says.

The man doesn’t smile but he does give off a faint air of amusement. “Not really with one, but I’ve been in the business a long time. It’s just a job, I don’t try and make it personal.”

Peter slouches down, drumming his fingers against the armrest as they drive out of the parking lot. “Well, if it’s not personal, then who hired you?” he says.

Talia glances at him, but he’s deliberately not looking at her. The hunter snorts and leans forward to rest the muzzle of his gun against Peter’s headrest, just short of his hair. “I don’t do conversation either,” he says. “Just drive.”

The hospital’s not too far from the preserve, and at this time of night, traffic is light to nonexistent. Which makes the car following them rather obvious, though its occupant is a little unusual: a red-haired woman who checks her lipstick at every stoplight, and periodically makes calls while making frustrated faces. For a few stops, Talia wonders if the woman is just coincidentally going in their direction, but then they turn out of the residential areas and onto the main road to the preserve, and the woman is still following them.

“I have no idea who she is,” Talia says when the hunter draws a breath.

“Yeah, well, we’re gonna see, so pull—” the hunter starts.

Something lands on top of the car. Talia slams her foot into the brake pedal, and at the same time whips around to grab the hunter’s gun. She jerks it out of his hand as it fires, smashing the windshield, but the car’s wild swerving lets the hunter evade her other hand. Then another body jams into Talia, temporarily trapping her against the seat: Peter, swearing and lunging over to grab at the wheel.

They miss a bush but the front wheels go off the road and into a ditch running alongside it, sending the car over onto its side. The hunter’s still banging around the backseat, but for a human he’s quick; he twists around, letting Talia’s claws shred his coat, and then kicks out the side window and is through it before she can so much as rip his ankles.

The car lurches and Talia’s head snaps into the roof of the car, before her weight suddenly shifts her onto Peter, who yelps and struggles so frantically that she thinks he must be injured. She smells blood. Talia snarls and just—slashes at the roof, a bare second before something on the _outside_ simply rips the whole thing off.

An alpha, a dark-haired male, looks back at her. “I’m really sorry about that,” he says, grabbing her wrist.

He yanks Talia out onto the grass, and then goes back for Peter. Talia’s still in fighting mode and twists around, then gets halfway into a full shift before remembering she’s still dressed. Her blouse’s seams split easily enough, but her jeans are not so fragile, painfully constricting before she reverses the shift and drops back, just in time for a dazed Peter to be deposited next to her.

The alpha stands up and Talia sees the hunter just rising across the wrecked car from them, another gun in hand. And then the red-haired woman appears behind him and swings a crowbar at his head.

The hunter senses it and turns. His arm takes most of the hit, snapping wetly. The gun falls from his hand but he whirls around and Talia can’t see his other hand—which is when another man stabs a knife into the side of his neck.

“Stiles!” the woman snaps. She’s clearly annoyed. “I wanted to _talk_ to that one.”

“Oops,” Stiles says. He lets the dying man pull the knife out of his hand and watches the body fall, then looks at the blood splattered over himself. “Man, you know, I shouldn’t even have bothered. We’re gonna need another shopping trip tomorrow at this rate.”

“So, hey, I know this is confusing but we’re on your side,” the alpha says to Talia. “I’m Scott. Scott McCall.”

Talia…is almost grateful she doesn’t immediately have to think of a reply, because Peter’s just scooted up and bumped her shoulder. Peter’s picking glass out of his arm—she grabs at him, he jerks from her, she lets out a curt growl and he reluctantly settles and lets her check him over for injuries.

“You have a huge piece in your shoulder,” Peter says.

“What?” Talia says.

He reaches around and yanks it out. There’s a brief blossom of pain, and then the flesh heals over. Talia dabs at the bloody streaks on her arm, then looks down and sees…well, she’s barely decent now, and that’s mostly because the blood is sticking the shreds of her blouse to her.

“Oh, hey, we have band—no, those are with the car,” this Scott says, shifting from helpful to embarrassed. Then he twists around and looks at the woman’s car, which is parked just up the road. “Lydia, did you—”

“Well, now we’re not going to know how he knew the Hales were at the hospital,” Lydia is scolding Stiles.

“Because he’s a hunter stalker asshole!” Stiles says, throwing up his hands. “So whatever, there’s a mole or something, how did _you_ know, I thought you were going to drive that guy—”

Lydia crosses her arms over her chest. “Does that _look_ like his car? And I was leaving him when his phone went off and it turned out that one was asking for back-up—”

“The _kids_ ,” Talia hisses, jerking up.

Peter looks at her, his eyes widening, and then he yelps again as she starts to collapse on him. Talia grabs his shoulder, just avoiding a complete fall, then grits her teeth and looks at her…yes, the damned break’s already healed, and healed wrong, and she’ll have to rebreak it.

“That doesn’t look—wait, wait, don’t just do it like that, you’ll get bone splinters and—” Scott says, reaching for Talia.

She twists away as best she can, hopping on her good leg and still holding onto Peter’s shoulder, and both of them snarl at Scott. He steps back, blinking, and then he puts his hand up to his head and rubs at it while looking embarrassed.

“Oh, yeah, so, Scotty here, he’s kind of a terrible alpha, so you can calm down, Talia, he’s not gonna be usurping any time soon,” Stiles says. He and Lydia have stopped fighting to face them, and then his eyes drop to Peter. He pauses, cocks his head in an oddly wolfish way, and then drops to his hands and knees and crawls forward, still looking at Peter.

For all that he’s in a submissive position, he isn’t giving off that kind of attitude at all. On the contrary, Stiles is aggressive enough that Peter hitches back into Talia’s leg, nearly sending her tumbling onto him, and then Peter grabs Talia’s ankle, a half-puzzled, half-alarmed noise coming from him as Stiles kneels up.

“Holy shit, _Peter_?” Stiles says.

“Yes?” Peter says uncertainly. He hitches again as Talia gives up and just lowers herself to the ground, and then he shifts slightly back, putting Talia between him and Stiles.

Who still hasn’t blinked. “Peter,” he says. “Peter. _Peter_. Wow. Okay, so we knew you’d be a teenager but…you are a _teenager_. You’re—you’re…are you shorter than me? I mean, you’ve always been, just in denial about it, but this is like, undeniable difference here.”

“Look, I don’t know who you people are, but—how do you know us?” Talia demands, over Peter’s stifled exclamation. She pulls her bad leg up and just rakes open her jeans leg, and then takes hold of either side of the break.

“So that’s—look, happy to tell you but can you please—please, okay, my mom was a nurse, I—that’s just—I’m not gonna hurt—well, we have to break your leg but—” Scott stammers, his hands going down towards Talia’s leg and back up as she snarls at him.

“For God’s sake, we just killed the hunter who was holding you hostage,” Lydia says. She seems to be the only one of the three with enough sense to stand well clear. “Your kids are fine, so just let Scott set your leg and we can go get them.”

Talia snarls at _her_ , and then grabs Peter with her free hand, pulling him fully behind her as Stiles inches forward. It’s a testament to how rattled Peter is that he doesn’t resist. “What makes you think I want you near my children, even if you did—”

“We’re from the future,” Scott says.

“Long story, you don’t care right now, but I think you will care about the fact that we’re better-armed, better-informed and much better-trained than either you or the hunters running around this town,” Lydia says. “And no, that’s not a threat. We know Derek and Cora, and we’ve met Laura a few times, and—Stiles, _really_?”

“His eyes aren’t blue,” Stiles says, in the tone of someone discovering the sun. And then he snorts and he gets up and finally moves back. “Okay, no, yeah, your eyes are pretty, pretty blue, but they’re not _werewolf_ blue, and Lyds, cut me some slack here. It’s Peter and he’s a cute little baby-faced…okay, fine. Right. So yeah, Talia, you don’t have a car now and we’ve got one.”

Peter snorts, though his hand is tightly wrapped around Talia’s. “It’s called running.”

“Yeah, sure, you’re gonna run all the way through town, looking like you just wrecked and murdered somebody,” Stiles says, flapping his hand.

“Okay, look, bottom line, we don’t want to kill you or your family,” Scott says. Whoever taught him about being a werewolf did a terrible job, but he’s finally assumed something close to a non-confrontational posture. “Actually, we’re here to help you. And I know you want to get back to your kids as fast as possible, so let me just help with your leg, okay?”

“You’re an alpha, how do we know you won’t just make it worse?” Peter snaps before Talia can get a word in.

Scott jerks back, surprised and surprisingly hurt—he’s a very young alpha, but still, he’s an alpha and he should expect that sort of reaction. For that matter, he should be inviting it. Every other alpha Talia’s met, her father included, never does anything without calculating whether it’ll make them look weaker or stronger.

“Fine, let’s just get this over with.” Lydia was looking at something in her hand, but she puts that away and walks over, dusting her hands against her hips. She swings around Scott, who steps back with an air of confusion, and then tugs her skirt so her squat doesn’t slide that any higher. Frankly, Talia thinks privately, it’s borderline indecent as it is, and she’s someone who regularly ditches clothing to shift.

And then Lydia wraps her fingers around Talia’s ankle and Talia stirs out of her bemusement. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Talia says. 

“I’m a banshee, it won’t affect your healing,” Lydia says. She tosses her head at the same time and her hair’s long enough that the tips almost graze Talia’s nose.

Talia twitches her head aside and then snarls, swiping out with one hand as her leg unexpectedly _cracks_ and liquid fire races up it. Behind her Peter jumps to his feet, and she can hear his claws whistling by her ear as he also snarls.

There’s a click and Talia hisses, instinctively grabbing at Peter. She tries to rise and her leg’s still being held and she lets out a failing roar as the bones rip into the surrounding flesh, then click painfully into place. She sways and her shoulder hits Peter and he stumbles, then pulls himself back up, staring nervously at something.

Stiles. Still kneeling by the hunter, one hand in the hunter’s coat while the other aims the hunter’s gun at Peter. “No mauling Lyds, baby evil,” he says. He holds the gun on Peter for an endlessly long second, then releases the safety and lowers it. “Right, so the leg’s good, so…whatever, you don’t want to talk about the house, we still need to close that up. And Scott was tracking something when you called.”

“Well, so go take care of that,” Lydia says. She wipes her hands off on the grass, then gets up, pulling at her skirt again. She glances over Talia’s leg—which is now straight—and then tosses her hair over her shoulder in a distinctly challenging way at Scott.

Who just smiles wryly, lifting his hands to show the palms. Then he keeps on turning, taking in the scene: smashed and semi-dismantled car, dead body, empty backwoods road. He sighs and scruffs at his head, then goes to join Stiles at the corpse.

The car. It isn’t drivable, and they have a point about simply going back into town on foot. And the longer they all sit here and debate it, the more Talia has to fight back the rising wave of panic in her, thinking about what might be happening to her children.

“You can’t just go to our house,” Peter’s saying. He’s still more than a little shaky, and when Talia gets to her feet, Peter startles and twists around, eyes widening, before he remembers it’s her.

“You’re driving?” Talia says to Lydia, who silently pulls out a set of car keys.

Peter looks between them, and then pushes up to Talia, yanking at her arm. “Are you serious?” he hisses. “It’s our house! They can’t just—”

“We’re not gonna touch it, okay, we’re just gonna shut it up so we don’t have a bonfire ten-something years before it’s going to be averted anyway,” Stiles grunts, deep into twisting up the hunter’s coat as a makeshift sling.

“I need to check on my kids, Peter,” Talia says, trying not to hiss back. “We don’t know if that hunter was alone, and I don’t even trust Lawson now, and the house—if anybody takes anything, we can get it back later.”

She lets her eyes rise to Lydia, who not only looks unimpressed, she heaves a sigh and glances off to the side as if completely bored with the issue. “One of us can drive you back in the morning,” Lydia says. Then her mouth twists. “Well, provided the woods are clear. What were you tracking, Scott?”

“That’s what I—” Peter starts. He shuts his mouth just as Lydia suddenly turns and looks sharply at him. Takes a step back against Talia, when he’s already just about standing on her feet, and then offers Lydia one of those innocently curious smiles of his. “I mean, if you think you can handle our house.”

“Handle what?” Stiles calls. He and Scott have the hunter by the shoulders and feet, respectively, and are carrying him back to the totaled car.

“Our house,” Peter says, with a sidelong glance of Talia. “You don’t think we’ve lived in the woods for this long and don’t know a few things about keeping out strangers, do you?”

“Hah, baby evil, good one. Here’s a thought—from the future, totally copied the electronic library you haven’t even thought about making yet,” Stiles says, dodging the hunter’s flopping head.

Peter stiffens at the repeated nickname, then blinks hard at the mention of the library. Then he stumbles as Talia nudges him far enough away that she can move. He turns around to look at her and his face shifts rapidly from startled to outraged as he realizes she’s ushering him towards Lydia’s car.

“Talia, it’s our—” he starts, grabbing onto her arm.

She lets him, and then uses his refusal to let go to haul him along. “Children, then come back,” Talia says, making up her mind. “And no, Peter, I don’t like it. But pack is us, not the things in that house. We take care of pack first, then everything else. Understand?”

He opens his mouth again, then abruptly turns his head away. Still, he’s walking with her, and he’s staying on the opposite side of Lydia, and Talia’s long since learned to settle for just getting what she needs to get done, done.

“If you delay even a second,” she says to Lydia. “Peter and I are leaving.”

“Good thing I gassed up,” Lydia says dryly. They’ve reached the car, but she waves Talia and Peter back as she quickens her pace.

Before Talia can complain, Lydia’s popped open the car trunk. There’s a zipper sound and then Lydia emerges with a bundle of clothes in her hand. “Fortunately, my emergency outfit takes into account the fact that at least one of _those_ two always forgets a spare shirt,” she says, giving the bundle to Talia. 

Her eyes linger on Talia, around the bust, and despite three kids and the gift of full shift, Talia has a brief urge to cross her arms over herself. Lydia tilts her head, then nods and turns to get into the driver’s seat.

“Well, it’ll get you in and out of the hospital, at any rate,” Lydia says. “Not that that means much, considering the kind of things that place has let in…well, never mind, that wasn’t here. Get in, we have speeding limits to break.”


	4. Chapter 4

“No, it’s just that maybe we should be talking about something else?” Scott says. He sniffs again, then turns aside and sneezes as a trace of wolfsbane gets up his nose. “It’s just, Stiles, we’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and things are already happening way too fast, and just, we’re _killing_ people now.”

“Okay, hang on a sec, this part’s tricky enough that I can’t do it and run my usual spiel about your moral idealism,” Stiles says, fiddling with a candle and a stick of sealing wax. “Man, I miss when I could just record that on my phone and play it back for you.”

Scott…tries not to be frustrated, he really does. He knows that however flippant Stiles comes off, the guy cares about people more than anybody Scott’s ever met. Stiles was the one who figured out how to time-travel, after all, and made all of this possible. And—and he hates killing people, he always will, but he wouldn’t still be going along with Stiles and Lydia if he didn’t see their point about that.

“It just seems like figuring out what’s going on might be more important than Peter right now,” Scott finally tries. “He doesn’t look like he’s causing trouble.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why I keep going back to it,” Stiles says. He’s apparently done with the tricky bit, because he’s got the lit, dripping stick of wax held in his mouth, bobbing madly with each word as he scribbles with the chalk around the cooling splotches on the Hale cellar door. “I mean, did you see him? Really, Scott, I know Talia was basically full frontal but did you _see_ him?”

“I was trying not to look at her, Stiles, that was—it must’ve been pretty annoying for her on top of worrying about her kids,” Scott mutters. Wondering why even now, he can’t help flushing up.

Stiles takes the wax stick out of his mouth and blows it out, then stuffs it in his pocket. He steps back and looks at his work, then snaps his fingers twice. Squints at the glowing sigils before nodding. “What I meant, bro, you weren’t looking at her so you completely missed the adorable little bundle of pre-psycho standing behind her. Scott, ‘babyface’ actually is an accurate description. Do you get how insane that is? Peter Hale, baby cheeks, same sentence?”

“I think I was stuck on you calling him ‘adorable,’” Scott says.

“Because it’s like somebody took him and plushified him!” Stiles says, turning on Scott with wide, shocked eyes. “Come _on_. Am I the only one who’s seeing this?”

“Well, he’s a teenager,” Scott says. He watches Stiles follow the glowing symbols along the side of the house till they find a break in the line, where a drainpipe’s running down the wall, and Stiles bends down to fill in the gap. “He had to be born and grow up and everything, we knew that.”

Stiles shrugs. “Dunno, man, I was honestly starting to buy that one version’s whole line about being born in the fire and raised by anger in his coma, and the rest of the crap he said.”

“Look, if we’re going to talk about that, shouldn’t we talk about Talia?” Scott says, a little desperately. “Didn’t she seem different too?”

“What, like she was really pissed off about her kids being fucked with? Not really,” Stiles says.

“Not just that, she was…she was really defensive, you know, not like a confident alpha at all,” Scott says after a second. “She was kind of omega, actually, except for trying to cover Peter. And—you know, that right there.”

Something of his unease must finally make it through to Stiles, because the other man turns around and really looks at Scott. “That they’re getting along?”

“That…that she was protecting him, and he was letting her,” Scott says. “I thought usually she let him handle himself, and he liked it that way.”

Stiles snorts, but his eyes are thoughtful. “Yeah, well, he’s also shorter by a whole two in—”

Even if Stiles is still human, at this point, with the time-travel and all the other magic he does, and what they’ve been through and seen, and just…spending so much time with supernatural folk, he’s got instincts just as good as any super-sense Scott has. He goes stiff almost before Scott catches a drifting scent on the breeze, and picks up the distant snap of a twig underfoot.

Scott raises his hand and points. Stiles nods and as Scott lopes off, the other man’s swapping the chalk for a gun. 

He’ll stay and finish up with the house, but after that he’ll come after Scott, so Scott hurries his pace a little, hoping to catch and subdue whoever it is before more force is necessary. They’ve already had plenty of bodies for the night.

The preserve’s still the same size and all, but it feels a lot different from the preserve in their timeline, or pretty much every other version except…except maybe the one in that really, really bad world where civilization had pretty much ended and everything was going ‘neo-Neolithic,’ as Stiles had put it. Things feel darker and much less friendly, not at all like local parkland that, despite the high number of fatalities, plenty of people had still visited on a daily basis. The trees seem thicker-bodied and closer together, the underbrush is harder to push through, and the shift of the branches overhead is constantly setting off Scott’s nerves with tiny rattles and rasps.

And the thing is, Scott thinks half-absently, following up on the scent he’s caught, it’s not like the wildlife has noticed. He’s hearing about the usual level of noise from birds and rodents and insects. So they must be used to it.

The scent suddenly strengthens, but when Scott takes another step, it cuts off like somebody sliced it with a knife. Scott frowns and works a few yards out from the spot on all sides, but still can’t pick it up again, and he doesn’t hear a heartbeat for something large enough, either.

“Funny,” he mutters, looking up at the trees. Nothing in them—nothing obvious, anyway. He takes a deep breath, then pitches his voice higher, but still conversational. “So, the verbena, that’s kind of a new one, but the pattern’s still the same. Except…you know, I don’t smell it closer than a hundred yards or so around the house.”

He pauses to listen. Doesn’t pick up anything yet, but the hairs on the back of his neck are prickling, and not in a way that makes him think he needs claws and fangs out. Just…has company, that’s all.

“I don’t smell it _in_ the house,” he goes on. “I do smell something else in there, something—I don’t know what it is yet, but if it makes my skin crawl, I’m pretty sure it’s not good. And Stiles—that’s my best friend, by the way—he’s not saying anything yet, but his face didn’t look too good.”

Something abruptly rustles and then scuttles off. It’s way too small, probably a rabbit or something like that, but Scott wanders towards it, then swings around and comes back. He can hear the birds quieting down as he moves; they’re high up but they’re not stupid, they sense werewolf and they keep an eye out. The birds all dampen down the same way, except in one spot where they get even quieter than in the rest of the section.

“We’re gonna be staying and checking it out,” Scott says. He stops in front of one of the trees in the very quiet spot and puts his hand out to rest against the trunk, then pops his claws straight into the bark. “I don’t know if you know the Hales, but we’re here to make sure they don’t get killed when they don’t deserve it. By anybody—hunter, regular people, other werewolves…”

There’s an odd…flutter, a very muffled heartbeat, but it disappears before Scott can get a good bead on it.

“Since Stiles doesn’t want to talk about it, I don’t think whatever was in the house was another werewolf,” Scott says. He looks up into the canopy and lets his eyes slowly redden. “We’ve pretty much got werewolves down by now. But we’ll figure it out, and we’ll make sure it doesn’t hurt anybody. We’re…kind of new here, I guess, but we’re not afraid to get involved.”

Scott looks up for another second, and then he steps sideways before pulling back from the tree. His claws rake through the bark in a wavy line before coming out of the tree.

“It’s not a vendetta,” he says, turning back to the house. He shakes a few bark chips off his fingers, then dusts his hand off against his leg. “It’s protection. We protect people who need it. And that goes for anybody, even hunters.”

He walks back towards the house, and a little more than halfway there, Stiles catches up to him. Stiles looks at him, then looks beyond him, shuffling backwards as Scott keeps walking. “No go?”

“They’re not an omega but I don’t think they’re here to make trouble either,” Scott mutters. “Definitely not connected to the house.”

“You say that, and I can tell you’re gonna talk to me about gut feelings, and I would be a terrible friend if I didn’t bring up the times when we let stuff go and it blew up in our faces. And notice the plural, because I own that my gut is a subjectively unreliable indicator sometimes, too,” Stiles says.

“I said I don’t think they’re here to _make_ trouble,” Scott sighs. He glances over his shoulder, then lifts his arm as Stiles finally about-faces and comes up beside him. “I don’t know about what trouble they might cause, but you’ve talked a lot about how active participation and passive triggering aren’t the same thing.”

Stiles snorts. “Don’t use my words against me, Scotty, that’s Lydia’s hobby,” he says. He rolls his shoulders under Scott’s arm, then yanks his hand up and yawns into it. “Well, fine, but only because it’s been a really long day and I haven’t even gotten to check the showers in the new place.”

“House is good?” Scott says.

“In the sense that nobody’s getting in or out of it for now,” Stiles says after a long pause. “That place is bad. And you know, the hunters not being able to tell who did in Grandpa and Grandma Hale…”

“How are we going to tell them?” Scott says, wincing. He’d actually forgotten about that for a bit, with the rush to get into position after Lydia’s call, telling them a hunter had Talia and Peter at gunpoint and was heading over. “And we wrecked their car too, and…you know, I can’t exactly blame them for not trusting us. This definitely isn’t going to be one of our good introductions.”

“We’ll tell them when they’re in a position to not kill us out of misguided grief or whatever, and at least no car is a pretty convenient reason for them to stay with us,” Stiles says.

Scott blinks hard. “What?”

“Trust me, Lydia’s totally sweet-talking them into that as we speak.” Stiles pulls his phone out and checks it, and then grimaces as it obviously doesn’t give him the confirming text he’s looking for. “Okay, well, she’ll get there at some point, and if we go back to the rental and we _aren’t_ greeted by the sunny faces of Mama Hale, her three bouncy wolfy babies, and Proto-Evil, I’ll buy all the ammunition for a month.”

“No, I believe you,” Scott says hurriedly, and then he pauses. “But…is that a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? They obviously are having issues if hunters are jumping them at the hospital, we just locked up their house for them, we have a handy place that’s gotta be better than wherever they were putting up before, just going by how they were dressed,” Stiles says. He cocks his head. “I mean. Was or was that not a hoodie on Peter? Like, a baggy one. He looks so weird without the macho pecs, doesn’t he?”

Scott suppresses a sigh. “This is what I mean, Stiles. We’re supposed to be good for them.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, it’s not like I’m obsessed or whatever with a guy who’s screwed us over in a supermajority of timelines we’ve visited,” Stiles says.

His voice drifts a little, making Scott look more closely at him, but Stiles is looking across Scott, angling awkwardly so he can frown towards the house. Scott drops his arm and steps back in case Stiles wants to head that way, but after a few seconds, Stiles just shakes his head and keeps on going the way they had been, towards their car that’s parked a little down the road going up to the house.

“Well, most stuff should be quarantined,” Stiles mutters. He’s still frowning. “Peter at least sounded like he wanted to get back there ASAP, so…probably see in the morning. Should be okay.”

“Okay,” Scott says.

“And it’s not just because it’s all about Peter, whatever timeline,” Stiles adds, unusually defensive.

“It’s okay,” Scott says. When Stiles glances at him, giving him a look that probably is just like the one Scott had been wearing a second ago, Scott shrugs. “We’ve all got stuff like that hanging around. Just…let’s not let it eat at us, okay? New timeline and all that, we shouldn’t get distracted.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, Scott,” Stiles says. He gives the house a final look, then swings towards the car.

* * *

Dr. Lawson isn’t anywhere in sight when they arrive at the hospital, which Peter can tell puts Talia’s hackles up right away. His sister breaks off halfway through telling the receptionist why they’re there and simply strides into the main part of the hospital. The receptionist bolts to her feet, alarmed, and Peter hesitates.

Lydia pushes forward, her calm but commanding voice immediately distracting the receptionist, and Peter hurries after Talia. He’s only a couple seconds behind, but when he catches up to her, she’s already at the door to the nursery.

“Mom!” Derek’s muffled voice says, just before the top of his head pops up into the bottom of the door’s glassed window.

By his second bounce, Talia has the door open and is sweeping him up into her arms, purring loudly and unashamedly. Derek’s eyes bulge and then dart to Peter, surprised and a little distressed by Talia’s reaction. Peter shrugs helplessly, then hears approaching footsteps and instinctively pushes at Talia’s back, shoving her further into the room. Then he ducks inside and closes the door.

He turns around and his sister’s grown two more appendages: Cora, clinging to her shin, while Laura excitedly tugs at Talia’s elbow. “Mom, Mom,” Laura says. “Mom, the nurse gave us _sour apple lollipops_.”

Talia makes some sort of acknowledging noise, but she’s preoccupied with tucking Derek against her shoulder and bending down towards Cora. Laura looks at her with a peeved expression, then spots Peter. Before he knows it, she’s trapped his hand and is pushing something slightly sticky into it.

“We saved you one,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper. “She said they were just for kids, and Derek tried to steal it ‘cause they always just have boring lemon or gross cherry.”

“Yes, those usually don’t taste right, curse of werewolf tastebuds,” Peter says, out of sheer…maybe it’s the car accident he was in a short while ago, or the self-proclaimed time-travelers. 

Or that damned syringe that hunter had stuck into the side of his neck when he’d been contemplating bashing in the vending machine to get at the half-dispensed bag of chips. His hand’s halfway up to his neck and then he catches himself, snatching it down before he would have stuck the lollipop into the spot. Which has already healed anyway.

Talia senses something and turns around to look at him. “Peter?”

“Hmmm?” Peter says.

His sister is patently unconvinced, but before she can do more than draw a breath for her question, the door swings open and Lydia is standing in the doorway. She looks over the children, who’ve all gone silent and watchful in the way of sensibly-raised werewolf children, and then she nods sharply.

“I see three, let’s go before the administration realizes I referred to blackmail I haven’t actually set up yet,” Lydia says.

“Blackmail?” Peter says.

“Excuse me?” Talia says. “Go?”

“If you aren’t staying at your house, where are you staying?” Lydia says. It’s not really a question so much as a verbal jab.

And it hits home, Peter can tell by how Talia presses her lips together. He and she probably remember about the bags in the wrecked car at the same time.

“Oh, Stiles and Scott will bring your things, and if you need anything, we’re still setting up house ourselves,” Lydia says. “We’ll probably be making another shopping run tonight.”

“We appreciate what you’ve done,” Talia finally starts, in a very tense, slightly growling voice.

“Look, I’m not going to make you,” Lydia says. She regards them a little bit like they’re misbehaving children, and she’s the type of teacher who would be embarrassed to have to rely on a wooden ruler to keep order. “I’m not Stiles or Scott, fortunately for your egos. You’re born weres and you can—”

Talia’s eyes narrow. “You said you were a banshee.”

Peter’s brows rise. They hadn’t talked at all during the drive over, except for the odd curse as he and Talia had squeezed broken glass out of each other’s flesh, but of course he’d been mulling over every little detail their rescuing trio had volunteered. But that’s how he is. His sister, on the other hand…Talia is smart, and has had all the training a born alpha should get and then some, but she’s always preferred to play a more reserved hand. It’s not her style to point-blank ask someone about their supernatural heritage. It’s rude, after all.

“Yes,” Lydia says, very simply and calmly.

She and Talia stare at each other for long enough that Cora starts to whine at the tension. Laura shushes Cora, fascinated; Derek looks like he might tend a little more towards Cora’s reaction. When Peter picks up Cora—purely to keep the toddler from breaking out into attention-grabbing wails—Derek makes a little longing noise like he wishes he could shift over, too.

“Are you here because of that?” Talia finally says. She draws a deep breath, weighing up something, and then moves Derek so that he’s more under her arm, a more protected position. “The old druid is gone and the new one’s here. Are you the same?”

Lydia looks interested for a brief second, and then assumes a considering expression. “We didn’t know about your parents till after we got here.”

Peter hitches towards her. He pulls up at Talia’s slight head-jerk, but keeps himself ahead of the equally curious Laura, who’s futilely trying to get through his and Talia’s legs. “You know about them?”

“We picked up some news,” Lydia admits. Then she glances down the hall, as the squeak of a gurney’s wheels floats towards them. “But I’m not saying any more here. You can go find a hotel or something like that, and we can take it up somewhere with decent privacy warding, but I’ll just point out we have room, and we also will have your things.”

“You are treading on very thin ice, whatever your nature,” Talia says sharply, but Peter can tell she’s conflicted. And then she looks at him, for some reason. “We’ve had—I’m just about fed up with being threatened for the moment, and I don’t think my brother is any more comfortable. Are you?”

“You’re asking?” Peter blurts. Then he—hides his embarrassed grimace, because that will just make things worse. “Well, honestly, I could do without another kidnapping.”

“And as I just said, I’m not making you,” Lydia says. She looks at them for another second, then turns on her heel and begins walking away. “We’ll baby-proof the bedroom and the adjoining bathroom, but you’ll have to keep her out of the kitchen. We need that to work.”

Peter makes a surprised, annoyed noise at the woman’s sheer arrogance…and then gets a good look at Talia. “Really?”

“We need somewhere to stay,” Talia mutters, staring after Lydia with a resentfulness she usually reserves for their father. “And—and we already ruled out hotels, unless you have another idea.”

“The hospital was my last one,” Peter says after a second. “Which was not so good, as it turns out.”

Talia looks at him again, and then she sighs and finally lets Laura burst out between them. “It was a good idea, it just went wrong,” she says.

Peter blinks and looks at her, and then hurries to catch up as she walks after Lydia. He’s not entirely sure, but he thinks his sister might have just…let him off the hook, even though her children had been involved. Given that he’s seen her smash omegas through trees for just asking after Laura, he thinks he’s justified in being surprised.

“I like your purse,” Laura says, trotting up to Peter.

He blinks again, then looks down just in time to see Laura reaching for the back of Lydia’s purse. “This is going to be vintage Prada and you will not get your grubby little claws on its finish,” Lydia says crisply.

Laura immediately snatches back her hand, torn between confusion and defensiveness. She shuffles back and grabs at Cora’s dangling foot so that Peter has to hop to avoid stepping on Laura’s foot.

“Don’t talk to my children like that,” Talia hisses.

“Don’t tell me to put up with their nonsense, I know what they’re like when they grow up,” Lydia says airily. She steps out of the hospital and into the parking lot, and then turns to lock eyes with Talia. “Well? Are we baby-proofing, or am I telling Stiles he can leave his necromancy tools wherever he feels like?”

Necromancy?

“Oh, no, Peter,” Talia mutters, glancing at him. Then she straightens up and faces Lydia. The muscle in her cheek tics once before she raises her chin: to anyone else, that’d be a challenge, but for a werewolf, it’s the first step to offering a throat. “Fine. But just because you’ve said you’ll help, not hurt. And I expect that we’ll be discussing exactly what that means before I do anything else with you.”

“Yes, yes, we’ll have the full talk later,” Lydia says. “For now, let’s get in the car before somebody notices Derek’s sucking the blood through your top.”

“Wh—Derek!” Talia says, jerking Derek away from her shoulder.

“Salty?” Derek says guiltily.

It is actually a little bit of a relief to get out of Lydia’s car and into a house. Which is surprisingly normal-looking on the outside, in a very normal, fairly supernatural-free section of town. Inside is…messy, but at first glance it mostly looks like the mess of someone who’s only just started unpacking. It isn’t till one starts taking a closer look at the boxes and shopping bags and other items scattered around the floor that one notices oddities such as an unusually large number of bottles of cleaning solution, or a heap of seed packets for herbs commonly used in magic-working.

Also, the extremely large pile of weapons just sitting out on the kitchen counter. Peter hasn’t brought himself to touch it yet since he can smell wolfsbane somewhere in there, but he’s squatting with his eyes at counter-level, trying to make out whether that’s a real _kris_ or just a very nicked-up dagger when his sister walks in.

“What’s going on at the house, Peter?” Talia says.

“What?” Peter says, startling away from the counter.

His heel catches on the linoleum and he stumbles, tries to catch himself, and then diverts his hand at the last moment when he remembers why it’d be a bad idea to blindly stick it on the counter. Talia sighs and steps forward and grabs his flailing wrist, pulling him back onto his feet. And towards her.

“I wasn’t lying,” Peter says immediately, twisting at his wrist. “There was something, all right, and it was—”

“I wasn’t saying you were,” Talia says.

She really doesn’t look like she’s angry with him, just concerned, and—his temper flares and he yanks his arm free, then backs up a good yard. “Well, then why are you asking?” he says. “You left with Mark and Laura and Derek in your belly. What do you care what happened at home?”

Talia looks angry, then sad, and then…strangely, she snorts at him. “All right, fine, do you want to go ahead and get all your yelling at me out of your system now? It looks like we’re safe for now.”

“Till Derek or Cora chews up that woman’s shoes and she throws us out,” Peter mutters. Then he notices something. “You changed.”

“Lydia also doesn’t appreciate having to break out the bloodstain remover her first night in a new place, so I showered and borrowed a few things,” Talia says. She’s a good few inches taller than Lydia, so the shirt is, again, a man’s shirt, but the skirt looks like it could have come from Lydia, and so does the hair-clip. “Peter, I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’ll try and make up for it now if you let me, but—but if you don’t…”

She trails off, suddenly looking uncertain in a way he hasn’t seen since she pulled him into her bedroom and sat him on her lap, and asked if he could hear a heartbeat in her stomach. Peter…was too young to know what to do about that then, and he hasn’t exactly had the opportunities to practice since. And he’s just—he’s not even really angry with her, he suddenly realizes.

He’s scared. And he hates being scared. He hates everything about it, how he feels, how it makes other people feel about and treat him. How his parents always shrugged and reminded each other he’s just a beta.

“You make it sound like I’m leaving,” he says, trying not to sound as twisted-up as he feels. “ _I’m_ not the one who does that.”

Then he freezes, but his sister—just laughs, wry and open, and then steps over to sling her arm over his shoulders. “You’re such a little twerp,” she says.

“I’m getting close to your height,” Peter mutters, elbowing her. Both for the comment, and to hide how fast he slumped into her. “What is the deal with my height tonight? First this Stiles, and what kind of name is that, anyway? Isn’t that part of a fence?”

Talia grins at him, but he can already see it fading around the edges, and he knows she’s back to thinking about their missing parents, the hunters, these three people who seem even more dangerous than any of that, for all that they really have only helped so far. He watches the worry lines groove into her skin and he really does think there are far more than he remembers, and she’s still not that old for a human, let alone an alpha werewolf.

“I…I wasn’t lying about it keeping me from going out either,” Peter says after a moment. “Whatever it is. It’s just—you didn’t think it was just the door lock that kept it from getting me, did you?”

“Honestly, I haven’t had a second, between finding you and the kids and…” Talia suddenly looks at him. “Were you doing magic again?”

“What do you mean, again?” Peter says. “You haven’t been here.”

Talia flinches, then draws herself up, her arm slipping off his shoulder till she’s just gripping him there. “Look, Peter, either you stop throwing that in my face, and you let me be your sister, or you—well, it’s not going to help us, and it’s probably going to get us both killed. Now tell me what you were doing, please.”

“It wasn’t even—I warded the thing off,” Peter half-snaps, half-mutters, looking from her to the floor. “I was in a hurry, all right? I was out all night looking for our parents, and running from hunters, and then I come home and this—this smoke _thing_ , it comes through the damn _wall_ and almost sends the ax through my head—”

“The one over the mantel?” Talia says.

“No, the other ax we keep around because we’re not just werewolves, we’re lumberjacks too,” Peter full-on snaps.

Talia’s mouth tightens but her tone is even. “That ax has iron plating on the handle, remember? Most spirits shouldn’t be able to touch it, let alone manipulate it.”

Peter hadn’t thought of that, and for a second he stands there in the warm, brightly-lighted kitchen and he feels more than a little chilly. “Anyway, I dove into the first doorway, which turned out to be the basement,” he says, trying to shake that away. “I had my stuff hidden down there anyway, and I just—I tried everything till something worked. And then I got stuck there, because it tried all around to get in. So if you’re going to be mad I was doing magic, well, at least it didn’t eat me, or whatever it wanted with me.”

“And I’m glad I found you uneaten,” Talia says. She’s being a little sarcastic, but she’s not even trying to keep the relief out of her voice. “It’s just magic’s dangerous, Peter, and you don’t even have somebody to tell you if you’re doing it wrong. You might figure that out the hard way.”

“I’m not stupid,” Peter says automatically. Then he looks up at her. “Well, did you expect me to ask our secret Emissary for lessons?”

Talia smiles. It’s very sarcastic, and very bitter, and then she turns away, shaking her head. She sees the weapons on the counter, looks again, and then raises her brows.

“Look, back there…the thing would go away, every so often, and just when I thought I might be able to get out and go to town, it’d come back,” Peter adds more quietly. “When you came, I thought it smelled like you, but I didn’t even want to yell in case it came back. I couldn’t figure out the pattern, and…”

“You know, I almost hope our parents are dead,” Talia says abruptly. She’s still looking at the counter, but she isn’t seeing it. “If they thought it was serious, even for a second, they should have called me. Or sent you to me, instead of risking…damned stiff-necked idiots. Well, at any rate, these people don’t seem fazed by very much, but if they don’t come back from our house, I suppose we’ll know.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” says a new voice. 

Stiles, walking in from the garage, undetectable until he takes something small and shiny from his pocket and tosses it onto the counter with the weapons. He’s followed closely by Scott, who shakes off his surprise to mouth an apology over Stiles’ shoulder.

“We’re being practical,” Peter says.

“One of your favorite subjects, Pre-Evil,” Stiles says, continuing to the fridge.

Talia’s shoulders spread and her eyes redden. Scott drops his wincing to lift both hands palms-up, moving between her and Stiles’ bent back.

Peter manages to cut in before either of them. “Is this because I’m evil to you in the future?”

Stiles looks up, then turns around with a couple floppy plastic envelopes in one hand. They look like deli cuts. “Well, actually, that’s kind of simplistic. See, time travel is complicated, because it doesn’t work anyway unless you throw the concept of purely linear chronology out the window, and basically every time you move, you’re not going backwards and forward, you’re moving sideways—”

“Like the multiverse theory?” Peter says. “Where you have an infinite number of possible alternate worlds?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says after a second, his sarcasm dropping in favor of curiosity. “So you’re up on that at this point?”

“Honestly, no,” Peter admits. “I’ve just read Moorcock and Terry Pratchett.”

Stiles flat-out stares at him. “You. Read. Pratchett.”

“Is there something wrong with that?” Talia says, frowning. “I got him started on it, I used to read the _Discworld_ books to him when we were younger. They’re funny, and also they’re more logical than the actual supernatural.”

“No, just…well, I just gotta refilter everything now, my God, we never ever thought about the influence of bedtime story reading choices,” Stiles says in a faint voice. He actually appears to be serious. “Uh. Okay. Anyway, so you’ve been, yeah, evil—”

“In these alternate worlds. Which isn’t this world. Because if it’s really a multiverse, then these worlds have to be completely independent of each other, or else you have something like a temporal paradox, right?” Peter says. “So actually, aren’t you being a judgmental asshole by assuming I’ll—”

“Hey,” Scott says.

He’s fairly mild about it, and his hands are still in the air, but the snarl Talia lets out in response is just a step below a genuine challenge. “Saving our lives does not give you the right to insult me or my family,” she says, looking from him to Stiles.

“Okay,” Stiles says. While the rest of them stare, he closes the fridge door and takes his deli cuts to the small sliver of counter that’s not covered in weapons, and then grabs a loaf of bread from one of the bags on the floor. “I do just want to mention that independent timelines and whatever, I’ve had serious conversations with Peter about not being a murdering dickhole and he’s said he’s understood that before, and then he goes and does it anyway.”

“Well, maybe he decided he might as well, if even time travelers act like they can’t expect better than that from him,” Peter snaps, stalking out of the kitchen.

Talia follows him. He expects her to. What he doesn’t expect, admittedly, is for her to stay silent while he storms by the living room, runs out of space and turns up a staircase, and then realizes he has no idea where to go next.

His sister brushes by his elbow. Peter jerks over, then turns to face her, but she’s not gearing up to lecture him. She’s opening a door—actually, she’s taking up a very odd position, bending down and pressing her side against the door with her free arm held out as if she’s crooking it against an invisible pillar. Then she opens the door and it all makes sense as Cora dives out through the widening crack, her siblings yelping behind her.

Talia expertly scoops up Cora, who is wolfed out and baring tiny fangs, and then sticks her leg into the space where her arm had been. She looks down till Derek and Laura reluctantly back up, and then she goes into the room, leaving the door open behind her.

Well, as irritating as the time travelers are, Peter isn’t in any position to leave. He doesn’t—he doesn’t want to leave his sister, anyway. She might irritate him too but she’s family, and family he really did miss.

Her kids, on the other hand. Laura and Derek pounce at him the moment he turns away from shutting the door, and Laura’s big enough now to almost send Peter over. Derek’s not so weighty, but he’s tenacious and refuses to stop cuddling Peter’s leg till Peter abandons going for the attached bathroom he can see, and just sits on the bed with Talia.

“I can smell you debating about how annoying they are,” Talia says.

Laura frowns. “Us? But he’s our uncle, he can’t be annoyed at us. We saved him a lollipop.”

“You did,” Peter acknowledges.

Derek stares up from his hold on Peter’s calf. “Was that my lollipop? Laura stole it from me.”

“I did not!” Laura says, putting her hands on her hips. “You already had three!”

Talia sighs. “Derek, you’re going to upset your stomach again. How many times do I have to tell you, werewolves heal. They don’t have extra stomachs.”

Derek looks at her, then squeezes Peter’s leg a little tighter, burying his face against Peter’s knee. “’m sorry.”

“You know, I do see why you didn’t even try to bring them by,” Peter mutters after a second. “Mom and Dad…honestly, I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Dad always said they didn’t want to see us,” Laura says, before Talia can get in a word. She’s matter-of-fact about it, but her scent turns a little sour with distress. “They’re mean.”

“Yes,” Peter says. He ignores Talia looking at him, and then offers Laura his hand. When she takes it, he helps her onto the bed, between himself and Talia, and she’s there for about two seconds before she bounces up to the headboard to do something with the pillows.

Whatever it is, it’s exciting enough to get Derek to abandon Peter’s leg. Derek’s a bit chunky—though it’s common for werewolf children to look like that; they tend to hit their growth spurts later than normal humans—but he can move fast when he’s properly motivated.

The two children occupy themselves, while Talia absently burps Cora, who promptly falls asleep against her. “Peter,” she says quietly. “Mom and Dad. After I left, I know it must have been hard, but they…did they…”

“I’m not a…public service announcement, or whatever you’re thinking,” Peter says, only just remembering to keep his voice pitched to not attract Derek and Laura’s attention. “They were just like before you left, just…well, you weren’t around to pass things down to me, so I had to find other ways to hear about them. And they wouldn’t let me talk to you. But…I’m not a doormat, Talia.”

“I know,” Talia says. She pets Cora, pursing her lips, and then suddenly raises her head. “Peter. Did the school not send anyone out? Haven’t you missed—”

“Do you remember where we live?” Peter says.

“Well, but your friends,” Talia says, frowning.

Peter shifts, or something, and it catches her eye. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at him, but it’s maddening and he finally can’t help himself. “Dad said stop showing off—he always said that, you know that. So I had to drop the basketball team, and well, high school fame is fleeting. This _is_ Beacon Hills. They all know the Hales.”

“We’ll get them to take us out to the house so we can get the important things,” Talia says after a long moment. “And then you and I will go to school, and talk to the principal, and we’ll see about knowing who we are. Don’t argue with me on this, Peter, please. It’s much harder to transfer you out if you have unexplained absences on your record, and away from here people do ask those questions. I’m guessing you’re also bored with class but the end of the semester’s not that far away. Just fake it.”

“Talia?” Peter says.

“I told you, I’ll make it up to you,” Talia says. “All right?”

He looks at her, and then he drops his eyes, but he knows he’s grinning. He probably looks like an idiot, but he doesn’t mind that. Doesn’t even mind when Derek takes an odd bounce off the mattress, or something like that, and collides with Peter’s back.

“All right,” Peter says, steadying his nephew. “I guess I’ll put up with them, too.”

“They grow on you,” Talia says, and then she hisses as Cora accidentally yanks her hair, trying to sleep-chew on it. She extracts the lock from Cora and then lies down on her back, curling the girl to her side. “Slowly.”

“Like mold?” Peter says, giving Derek a small push so he overwhelms Laura instead of just puffing her with the pillow he’s holding.

Talia makes a face at him. “Twerp.”

“Bossypants,” Peter says. The hoodie’s ridden up and he tugs it back down, then frowns as he feels a lump in the pocket. Then he takes out the semi-forgotten lollipop. He looks at it, then shrugs and unwraps it and sticks it in his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figure werewolves have to have more symbols than just a spiral for vengeance.
> 
> If you don't recognize the call-outs, Moorcock refers to Michael Moorcock and Pratchett to Terry Pratchett, both of whom are fantasy writers who've written extensively in the time-travel genre.


	5. Chapter 5

“I don’t think they’re coming down again tonight,” Stiles says.

“That’s what happens when you lead with the negative,” Lydia says. “Pass me the wine?”

Stiles hands her the half-empty bottle so she can top up her glass, then takes it back to top up his own. Since she’s a full-fledged banshee now, she’s got a slightly different metabolism, and Scott doesn’t even register alcohol unless they cut it with wolfsbane, and turns out long-term magic use does weird things to your biochemistry, so Stiles’ liver is going to be fine, too. But…yeah, it probably says something about them, the wine.

“I think I’m going to go back out, see if I can pick up more about the hunters,” Scott says, finally pushing back from the table. “I might swing by the clinic too.”

Lydia looks at him. “Talia said the old druid is gone and there’s a new one.”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Scott says. “Deaton wasn’t in before, but if he and Talia are talking—”

“I wasn’t really reading that as a friendly tone there, Scotty,” Stiles says, but he’s half-hearted about it. “Also, so druid, but it’s way past midnight.”

“So if he’s involved at all, he’ll be there instead of wherever he’s living,” Scott says.

Stiles and Lydia look at each other, and then Stiles shrugs. “Okay, suit yourself. Just don’t follow the villain into his lair without back-up, blah blah blah, and would you mind grabbing some more food while you’re at it? At least one of them has a black hole in their gut.”

“Odds on Derek,” Lydia says as Scott nods and leaves. She polishes off her glass, idly poking at her laptop for a few more minutes, and then she sighs and shuts the top. “I think I’ll turn in too. I have double the blackmail to set up tomorrow now.”

“Yeah, got to look fresh and not raccoon eyes for that, that’s definitely not intimidating,” Stiles says, staying where he is.

Lydia lingers for a little bit, washing up dishes and rearranging things and doing other chores she normally doesn’t touch if they aren’t in a collapse-of-society world, but she must not be too worried about Stiles because she doesn’t say anything when she finally does walk out. Stiles sips some wine, going over the various bits of info they’d gotten, and then reaches for Lydia’s laptop. Then abandons that idea and sits back.

He’s not sure how long he does that, but he’s feeling a little stiff when he finally gets up, figuring he’ll go back and fight with the primitive technology till he falls asleep in a cable snarl. Stiles walks into the living room and starts to sit down, then looks over at the staircase.

“Um, so, your eyes glow? Which is not really great if you’re trying to hide?” Stiles says.

After a couple seconds, Peter slinks down the steps and around the rail, and edges over to the doorway. His hair’s rumpled, so he was sleeping—he’s changed too, wearing a t-shirt and pair of sweatpants that Stiles remembers buying for himself. Both of them are baggy, and the sweatpants lap over Peter’s bare feet in a weirdly vulnerable way.

“Maybe I’m not trying to,” Peter says. And that’s weird too. His voice isn’t quite there—it’s got the silkiness, but the timbre’s a little high, and he’s not really using it. The Peter Stiles is familiar with employs his voice like an extension of his ego, intimately assured about it in a way that this Peter isn’t. This Peter is just…talking.

Also, man, Stiles isn’t sure when the amber glow is going to stop throwing him. He actually can’t help relaxing when that goes away and he’s just looking at the blue eyes he’s expecting, and yeah, that’s pretty jackass-y of him. “So you had a point earlier,” he says, sitting down with his cables and computer parts. “But you should keep in mind that we’re coming at this from—”

“Did I try to kill you, or something like that?” Peter asks.

“Did the other you try to kill me, you mean,” Stiles says. “We just went through the whole exercise of differentiation, Peter, don’t cede ground like that.”

Peter’s obviously trying to decide whether his curiosity is more important than his pride. “You’re really sarcastic,” he finally says. “I thought time travel was supposed to broaden your horizons.”

“That’s regular travel. Time travel makes you an asshole,” Stiles says, squinting at a circuit board. He hears the startled noise Peter makes and laughs. “Yeah, so, look, we do actually mean well, and if nothing else, you can judge that by the body count we are ninety-nine point nine percent going to rack up in your favor. But we’re all pretty fucked-up, and you should remember that.”

“How come?” Peter asks. “I mean—if you’ve seen how everything happens so many times, then—”

“You don’t see how that could end up making you cynical?” Stiles says, glancing over.

Peter shrugs nonchalantly, but he looks deeply frustrated under that. “No, I can. It’s just, if you know what to do, isn’t that—isn’t that powerful?”

“If that was how the multiverse _works_ ,” Stiles says. Like him and not, again. Talking about power, but wistful, not craving and obsessive. “Like you said, they’re independent of each other. There are still things that carry over, and people are going to be themselves, even if they make different choices, and…but stuff is different, you know. The probability of the outcome of a flipped coin isn’t changed by the results of all the other flipped coins that happened before it.”

“So you’re still guessing in the dark, is that what you’re saying?” Peter says.

Stiles raises the soldering iron, then puts it down. Computer parts are a lot more expensive in this time period and he really shouldn’t be working angry, he always ends up building homicidal possessed appliances or whatever. “Yeah, that, and…stuff’s different.”

“Like what?” Peter asks. Then he pricks up with some thought of his and it’s just…so very, very weird to watch that and realize that he might not be doing it to further some scheme of his, or playing to his audience or anything except looking kind of pleased with himself at being clever. “Like you? How did you get involved anyway? If you’re from the future—but if you know Talia’s children when they’ve grown up, you can’t be that old. Are you here now?”

The thing is, Stiles thinks in annoyance, Peter’s always been really damned attractive, it’s just his fundamental preoccupation with getting ahead of everybody else colors that in a very off-putting way. And now—it doesn’t. Well, plus the jailbait thing, and God, it is _so_ mirror-universe when Stiles is the pervy old guy.

“No, that’s impossible,” Stiles says, not thinking.

He immediately regrets it, but, well, if time travel has drilled one thing into his head, it’s that a secret once hinted at is pretty much gone. Either you tell the whole thing, or you watch as the crypticness just screws everybody into acting like complete suicidal idiots. And it’s definitely going to screw with this Peter, he can already tell by how Peter gets all shady with his excitement, like he’s already used to having to come at things sideways to get them.

“I mean,” Stiles says more carefully. “That’s one of the few rules of time travel, it turns out. You can’t have doubles, so you can’t actually meet yourself. It’s not like you implode the world or destroy reality, it just—it doesn’t happen. You just can’t get into those timelines.”

“So…so you don’t exist here?” Peter says, frowning.

“Or I’m already dead.” Stiles shrugs. “I would’ve been born by now, but stuff happens. Miscarriages, deadly childhood diseases, accidents.”

“Oh,” Peter says. He obviously wants to ask a follow-up, but he’s holding it back, looking uncertain and a little wary of Stiles.

Stiles shrugs again. “Honestly, we don’t really check that stuff besides seeing if it’s not existing versus being dead. You look into the abyss, it looks back at you, blah blah, we’re already screwed-up enough without knowing whether our parents just didn’t meet up or they’ve kicked it early and I am freaking you out.”

Peter blinks hard. Almost shakes his head, making a little movement towards it, and then he just straightens up instead. Which is kind of weirdly Derek, actually. “Well, yes, but you don’t meet time travelers every day.”

“Yeah, and speaking of, it is close to daylight and I really need to stop doing the nocturnal thing, or I’m never going to adjust,” Stiles says, finally abandoning the components. “And you, I see the yawn, your wolfy stamina isn’t hiding it that well.”

“I had a bad week,” Peter says mildly. He shuffles backwards as Stiles comes towards him, then darts up to the halfway point on the staircase. Then he goes up a little further as Stiles keeps walking towards him, looking more and more uneasy. “Look, if you don’t like talking about it, you started—”

“I actually didn’t, but whatever, just go to bed, mini-you,” Stiles says. “Even if you’re not evil, I don’t trust that you have any idea what to do with my stuff and that shit is expensive.”

Peter makes a face at him, but he goes up the rest of the steps without really arguing. “I’m starting to think I liked the evil nicknames better.”

“What, you don’t like knowing you’ll be taller?” Stiles says, and then snickers when Peter pauses, clearly not having thought of that.

“How much taller?” Peter says after a second. He’s gotten to the top of the stairs and he waits there for Stiles to catch up. Still wary, but he’s edging a little closer. “Am I a beanpole?”

“Nah, you fill out,” Stiles says. Then he reaches out and pokes a finger into Peter’s shoulder. “But that’s enough news from the future. You go to bed and keep up the not-evilness, we’ll do more tomorrow.”

Peter looks a little mutinous, but after a second he retreats to the room they gave the Hales. He shuts the door firmly behind him, but not before Stiles gets a glimpse of red glowing eyes. Talia seems very much in Peter’s corner in this world, and Stiles probably should pay more attention to that.

“Done baiting Peter?” Lydia says when Stiles climbs into bed.

Not that they’re together—though stuff’s happened, hey, they’re closer than goddamn twins at this point—but giving the Hales a bedroom means somebody’s got to share, and while they all have nightmares, Scott is the one who pops claws during his. “Hahaha, done figuring out Talia’s cup size?”

Stiles is literally just tossing that blind, really, but being so close sometimes means he surprises himself with how well he reads Lydia, and vice versa. He can totally feel the waves of irritation radiating from her corner, and he has to stop and take a couple deep breaths, and remind himself that he really does want to sleep, and not to piss her off.

“Well, she’s actually not that far off our age, sort of, probably,” he finally says. “And genetically predisposed to be smokin’, because what with that, Hales?”

“Stiles,” Lydia says, and when he pauses to let her finish, she just reaches up and grabs the back of his head, and shoves him face-first into the pillow.

He laughs. He can’t help it, and after a second, Lydia lets up on her grip and just gives him a few hard pats on the back. Then she rolls over, and he tucks himself into the blankets, and they both drift off.

* * *

When they wake up—far too early, says the fatigue finally catching up with Peter’s body—Talia’s as good as her word. Scott isn’t back yet, so she takes out a moment from wrestling breakfast into Cora’s mouth to stare Stiles and Lydia into looking at her.

“We need things from our house, and then Peter needs to start going to school again,” Talia says.

Stiles and Lydia look at each other and Peter sees the muscles in his sister’s shoulders bunch under her shirt. Then Stiles pulls his phone out and looks at something on it, while Lydia briefly disappears into the other room, then comes back with a binder in hand.

“Just tell me what the keystones are, I can handle what you did to the house,” Lydia says, sliding the binder over to Stiles. “And don’t get caught up like you usually do.”

“Lyds, it is a genuinely cross-universe mystery why Finstock is _identical_ in every world,” Stiles says. “Also, why am I doing the school?”

“What?” Peter says. “Wait a minute.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Talia says. “I’m taking Peter, I’m just telling you—”

“I’ll take you to the house once Scott is back, because he can watch the children. He likes babysitting,” Lydia says, in the tone of someone barely refraining from commenting on the incompetence of them all. “But that will take most of the day, so unless you want to put off Peter going, Stiles can take him and deal with the administration. And Stiles is better for that, because he has an ongoing vendetta against the school.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “It’s not really a vendetta, okay, way to inappropriately culturally appropriate, Lydia. I just—enjoy bamboozling them. And maybe know enough about laws applying to educational institutions to—”

“I’m not leaving my children with you,” Talia says. “We just met you, and you killed someone on a public road right in front of us.”

Lydia makes a disbelieving noise, and then there’s a harsh clatter as Derek drops his spoon. They all glance in his direction and Derek visibly stiffens, whimpering, before diving so suddenly off his chair that Peter instinctively grabs at him.

Peter misses and Derek retreats to under a very still, very on-the-verge-of-challenging Talia’s chair. Laura slips off her seat and drops to hold hands with him, while Cora spits out her latest mouthful and nearly plants her food-smeared face in her mother’s front before Talia catches her.

“I’d suggest we have this talk without them, but hey, you know, I’m not the parent,” Stiles says, observing all of this. “I guess if you wanna keep them close and get them started early on the road to trauma—well, earlier—”

“Shouldn’t you know whether this is bad for them or not?” Peter says. Then he sees that little weary shake of Stiles’ head and his annoyance peaks. He’d—actually had a reasonably decent talk with the man last night, and at least felt like he wasn’t being patronized, even if he’s no surer than Talia that they’re really among friends. But here they are, back to technicalities. “Shouldn’t you be able to take an _educated_ guess, then?”

“Mom, can we go home?” Laura suddenly says. She peeps up over the edge of the table, then drops back to about the level of Talia’s waist, tugging at the hem of Talia’s shirt. “I want to go home. I miss my room.”

A strange expression crosses Talia’s face, reluctant and almost ashamed. She puts her hand down and lets Laura grab at it, but keeps eyeing Stiles and Lydia.

“If you want to drag them around with you, then by all means,” Lydia says. She sits back and dabbles her spoon into her fruit salad, ignoring the clear, disbelieving, disagreeing look that Stiles is giving her. “In a town crawling with hunters, and we’ve killed two, actually, and I assume that the Argents have at least noticed they’re missing people at this point, so the rest of them will be on high alert.”

“I just don’t have any idea why you’re doing this,” Talia says. She’s as rigid as steel but the words are bursting out of her like water balloon bombs on hot concrete, filled to breaking with frustration. “If you’re the time travelers you say you are, why do you even care about us?”

“Okay, so normally I am very pro-disclosure whatever your age, but maybe we should…turn on the cartoons in the living room or something,” Stiles mutters, rubbing his hand over his face.

“You’re mean,” Laura says, standing up again. She looks at him, and then turns with a betrayed look as Talia draws a breath. “Mom! Mom, this isn’t fair, you’re always making me leave. I’m an _alpha_ , you keep saying so, I should get to know secrets.”

“Laura, please, not now—” Talia starts. Then she fights down her tone from angry to merely sharp. “You’re also still a kid.”

“Well, Peter’s not that much older!” Laura cries. “And I am not! I watch Derek and Cora all the time since Dad left, that’s grown-up stuff! You said so! You said I was being a big girl now!”

Talia presses her lips together, looking down at her defiant child, but Peter can sense his sister thinking about him, can practically hear the request to take the kids away. He supposes it’s expected, but he can’t help feeling resentful himself. And it is _not_ like his bratty niece; he’s actually had to step out onto the front lines of…whatever they’ve gotten into this time.

“You’re just trying to guilt your mother into letting you stay,” Lydia says. “It might work, but now you’ve put her on alert that you’re interested. You’d probably get further if you just stayed quiet and figured out which rooms let you eavesdrop and which don’t.”

“I do _not_ appreciate—” Talia starts heatedly, just as a door creaks open.

“Good morning,” Scott says a second later, walking in with a polite smile on his face. Which has faded before he gets halfway into the room, leaving him looking awkwardly around them all. “Er. So, I…I’m going to guess I walked into something.”

“No shit,” Stiles mutters into his hand. “Why are we _not_ better at this part.”

“You said a bad word,” Laura accuses him.

Stiles looks up, but before he can respond, Scott’s come around his chair to look at Laura. “Hey,” Scott says. “I think we found something.”

He presents Laura with something that makes her squeal and pounce before Peter can see more than dangling limbs and brownish fur. Talia stifles an angry noise, her hand still half-raised to make an interception that’s not needed as Laura cuddles her stuffed toy.

“You found his ear!” Laura says, completely forgetting about her argument. “Basil Stag Hare lost his ear months ago! I thought it’d never grow back!”

“Redwall?” Peter mutters. “Heroic mice? Aren’t predators always evil?”

“It was her pick at the library and why do you know it has heroic mice?” Talia mutters back.

“So, hope you don’t mind, but I realized we forgot to bring that in with the rest of your things, and his stuffing was coming out of the ear-hole so I figured I’d fix it while I was at it,” Scott says.

“Does this mean that you have a maimed rabbit toy in your car somewhere?” Lydia sighs.

Scott looks embarrassed. Laura is still squealing with joy, now babbling to Derek about how see, even he can’t keep Basil down, and after a second, Peter slides out of his chair and squats and winkles Derek out from between the legs of Talia’s chair. He doesn’t straighten up, but keeps a confused Derek basically on his belly as he backsteps his way across the kitchen and into the adjoining living room. Laura contently follows along, too busy lecturing Derek to really notice.

“Okay,” Scott says, looking amused. Then he glances at the table and frowns. “Oh, hey, they’re not done yet.”

He picks up Laura’s and Derek’s dishes and trots off into the other room just as Peter lets go of Derek and hastily doubles back. Laura finally looks up, her eyes narrowing, but before the trick can really register, Scott’s talking to her about what is the hare’s name and she’s just thrilled that he knows Basil is a hare and not a rabbit.

“We can still see them from here,” Peter says to Talia, who looks both unhappy and maybe, just a little, amused with him. “And I don’t know, but he does seem awfully nurturing for a male alpha.”

Talia stiffens and Peter has no idea why—he certainly isn’t shocking her with his observation—but he wishes he’d just stopped when he was ahead, she looks so tense. But she just watches Scott talking to the children for a few seconds, breathing in a very controlled way; Peter checks for claws and doesn’t see any, though her fingertips look a little swollen.

“You really shouldn’t think of Scott as an alpha,” Lydia says, quietly and calmly. She doesn’t so much as bat an eye when Talia twists back to glower at her. “He never was really part of a normal pack, and he didn’t kill to get alpha status either. Not that he won’t, it just didn’t come up at that point.”

“You mean he’s a true alpha?” Peter says. He’s still got half an eye on the other room and Scott twitches a little, but doesn’t stop shaking Basil’s paw.

“He’s Scott, he’s literally a babysitter who will charm the pants off your kids and make anybody who comes after them shit in theirs,” Stiles drawls. “Which, okay, awkward segue, but we’re pestering you people because we’ve gotten you killed before and we feel bad about it.”

Peter turns all the way around. Stiles shrugs at him, then suddenly raises a finger.

“Okay, to be accurate, we’ve gotten you killed _and_ we’ve had to kill you because evil, and I at least don’t really feel bad about the second category, but I do about the first,” he says.

“But…why do you care about that?” Talia says again.

“Well, first, if we’re going to be truly accurate, we should say that it wasn’t you, it was your children. You were always dead by the time we were around before,” Lydia says. She pauses, and then looks more than a little interested when Talia lets out a short, sharp exhale, but otherwise doesn’t react. “All right, occasionally Peter, too. But we…we were friends with them.”

“Also, we owed them, and we never got the chance to pay them back,” Stiles says. He’s restless, kicking at the ground and fidgeting with his glass. “You can’t go back in your own timeline, that’s another rule. You can’t fix what happened there, you can just—go sideways.”

Talia absorbs that in silence. Peter watches her, and then startles as a loud smash comes from the other room. He looks over, sees that it’s only Derek jumping onto the coffee table, and then looks back in time to see Talia raise her hand.

“So you’ve gotten my children killed,” she says dryly.

Lydia and Stiles both look uncomfortable. It’s especially odd on Lydia, who doesn’t seem to know how to let it sit on her face. “Well, but we’re _trying_ not to,” Stiles says.

“Look, just—” Talia jerks her hand as if to accuse, or issue an order, or do something else commanding, and then she just stops. She stares at them, then abruptly presses her hand to the side of her head instead. “Dealing with the school can’t take nearly as long as dealing with the house. Peter shouldn’t have to leave them with Scott the whole—”

“Why aren’t I coming to the house?” Peter says, surprised again. Why, he’s not sure; this is certainly the most predictable Talia’s been since she came back. “I’m the one who knows where everything is. You haven’t lived there in years.”

Talia looks at him, her mouth open, and then pulls herself back to give Stiles and Lydia a tight, barely polite smile. “Can my brother and I have a moment?”

Stiles immediately gets up, wandering out into the hall. Lydia eyes them for a few seconds, then rises and takes her bowl into the living room, much to Peter’s surprise.

“I’m not trying to cut you out, Peter,” Talia says, drawing back his attention. She settles Cora on her lap—the girl’s actually gone and fallen asleep at some point—and then looks up at him. “Or just making you go to school because. This thing kept you stuck for five days and you only figured out how to keep it away by accident, and I can still see where you’ve burned up the weight. You need to recover before you can start helping.”

“Well—fine, but how do you know you can deal with it?” Peter says. He’s more than a little off-guard, having expected her to go with something more along the lines of, just do it before I have to make you. “You don’t even do magic.”

Talia looks a little annoyed with him. “I don’t choose to, but I can do it if I…and anyway, I’m not planning to stay there for anything except grabbing the things we need to keep in the family. But even if it’s not fair, I’m the alpha and that means I’ll survive things you won’t, all right?”

“That doesn’t sound worrying at all,” Peter snorts, but inside his stomach is lurching. Unpleasantly, and not in a way he’s used to. Even with Talia gone, he rarely worried about her. Like she says, alphas don’t get taken down by much.

She looks at him for a little bit, her face gradually softening, and he flushes but can’t really bring himself to say anything. Then she cocks her head, an odd light coming into her eyes. It’s slyness, he eventually identifies.

“Stiles seems to talk the most, and he keeps talking to you,” she says in a very low voice. She pauses and he can tell she’s listening for the others, but Scott, at least, is completely involved in what seems like a very competitive game of slap jack with Laura. “It’s not as if I’m leaving you with nothing to do.”

“Are you…are you implying something?” Peter says, incredulous. Not because he thinks his sister can’t be underhanded—she managed to sneak out with Mark enough to get pregnant with Laura, after all—but because she’s actually involving him in her planning. 

“Don’t get carried away, but we need to know what’s going on,” Talia says, much more soberly. Then that near-guilty look flits over her face again. “If he drops something…and I have to keep the kids in mind on top of everything else, Peter. I don’t like any of this, but we don’t have a lot of choices. We’ve just got to work with what we have.”

“It’s too bad that Mark can’t take them for a few days,” Peter says. He’s not being insulting. On the contrary, he’s actually very pleased that Talia is recognizing he has skills, and so he’s distracted and just blurts that out. “I hope you at least got child support out of him.”

Talia looks—Peter flinches, and she shakes herself out of it and ducks her head, making an irritated noise. Then she lifts her head and she looks so worn out that he half-raises a hand, almost thinking she’ll faint on him.

“Just not now, Peter,” she says. “Please. I know you, but—just not now.”

“Fine,” he says, still too thrown to do anything else. “Fine. Well, look, I’ll tell you where to…you might want to write this down, if we can get…”

He starts to look around, but Talia just sniffs twice, then gets up and goes to a drawer. She pulls it open, blinks hard at the contents, then carefully extracts a green colored pencil and a couple napkins. Brings both back to the table and assumes a dictation position before looking back up at him.

“I’ll start with the books,” Peter says after a second.

“Just remember we don’t have a lot of room, unless they have a moving van up their sleeves,” Talia says, sighing. “We can get your personal ones later, or I’ll buy you new ones.”

“I know, I’m not making you get my novels,” Peter says, irritated. “Just the references that might be useful.”

She looks at him. He makes a face at her, and she sighs and puts pencil to paper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Finstock nicks the _Independence Day_ speech no matter what timeline.
> 
> The _Redwall_ series by Brian Jacques involves a fantasy world where mice, squirrel, and hares are constantly waging grand battles against evil predator creatures like foxes and martens and weasels. It contains some of the most ridiculously indulgent food porn I've ever read, and I imagine Peter reads it for the dessert descriptions and so he can smirk about how if he were running the battles, he'd do a lot better.


	6. Chapter 6

Scott pulls Stiles and Lydia aside while Talia and Peter are busy trying to get the children dressed for the day. “I got hold of Deaton,” he says. “He just got here, says all he knows is there was a change of alpha, and Talia was upset with him for telling her that.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. In all honesty, Lydia isn’t any more enthusiastic, but a druid is still a person with considerable skills and pretending Deaton doesn’t exist has never done anything but bring unpleasant surprises.

“Does he have hair?” Stiles asks, before Scott can go on.

“This is why you’re being banished to school,” Lydia says, thwapping Stiles on the back of the head. Then she turns away from his indignant rant about that being for his vendetta, and looks at Scott. “Bottom-line it, we’re all on the clock here.”

“I think he’s open to the idea that he should drop the rulebook and just listen to us,” Scott says. “He seems pretty rattled. He’s definitely noticed all the hunters.”

“Also, new alpha is angry at him, and considering what she’s like with people who bring her good news…” Stiles says, finally getting serious. “Speaking of. So we haven’t dealt with the grandparents.”

Scott winces and then jerks his head up, listening even though the privacy wards in the garage are fresh. “We have to tell them,” he says. “Dr. Deaton was saying, the moment that that news gets out, the rest of their pack will—”

“Well, will it?” Lydia says sharply. When Scott gives her a puzzled look, she barely resists the urge to swing her purse into his head. “I mean Deaton. Since he knows now.”

“Goddamn it, Scott, did you—” Stiles groans, putting his hand over his face.

“Oh, no. No, I didn’t, all right?” Scott says, suddenly irritated. “He knew before I brought it up. I’m not—I’m not stupid, and just because I still try to not kill people right off the bat doesn’t mean that I’m—I’ve seen all the stuff you have, and I’ve been at all the burials, and I said just like you I don’t want to do that anymore. So can you give me a little credit here?”

Stiles pulls his hand down, blinking hard, and then he winces. But then, his being easy on Scott’s still the one spot he hasn’t managed to toughen up. “Okay, okay, I think—I think we’re all a little cranky. This shit is piling up a lot faster than we figured.”

“It’s also doing it without us. You’ve noticed that, right?” Scott says. He’s already looking a little embarrassed, and his tone’s shifting to earnest, trying to make nice with them. “Deaton—who is lying low till one of _us_ and nobody else calls him—says the hunters have been here a good week now. I was trying to get him to tell us what he knew about the family history here, to see if I could figure out the divergence point, but there’s just _so much_. Like Talia actually left a few years ago because her parents didn’t like her mate, and—”

“Lydia?” Talia’s muffled voice calls. “Can we get this over with?”

The three of them look at each other. Then Stiles swings around towards the house door, shaking his head. “Well, have fun with the kids, Scotty. Me, I’m pretty sure Peter’s going to give me the grand tour at school.”

“Don’t get too carried away,” Lydia reminds him.

Stiles flaps his hand over his shoulder and doesn’t look back. Lydia debates making him, and then decides it wouldn’t be worth the delay.

“I think he’ll be okay. I think he was just edgy before,” Scott says, reading her. He has come along, nobody’s denying that, and the proof is in the fact that he can follow her. Not as effortlessly as Stiles, but he can. “And well, it is really weird to see them all so young. Derek actually asked if I thought Laura was mean to him.”

“Things you wish you could tape and send backward in time,” Lydia mutters. She refuses to flinch when Scott does, instead checking her reflection in the car window before going up to the garage door. Stiles left it ajar and she pushes it till the bolt clicks, then looks at Scott. “Get on my laptop and write down everything Deaton told you, and _don’t_ forget that children always spill secrets at the worst time.”

Scott doesn’t quite roll his eyes, but he looks tolerantly at her. “I’ll wait till their naptime. Look, about Deaton—he’s really rattled. He has no idea half the things that’ve happened.”

Lydia suppresses a sigh. “How surprising. A druid who doesn’t know what’s really going on.”

“So that’s why, when he asked if the hunters were after _us_ instead of the Hales, I said yeah,” Scott says. He steps up to the door and puts his hand on the knob, then looks at her again. “You’re not going to say I should’ve waited?”

“Oh, you should have, but Stiles can take that one this time,” Lydia says. Then she gives him a grudging nod, because credit where credit is due, and God knows Scott already takes all the encouragement Stiles can muster and still barely manages one good lie every few weeks. “So he’s young, he still has to make a name for himself, he’ll be out in the woods too?”

Scott nods, and then holds the door when she tries to twist the knob. “Listen,” he says more lowly. “You’re the only one who hasn’t been out there yet, but that house is the wrongest part of all of this, and even Stiles felt—just watch out, okay?”

“You say that like somebody who didn’t just trick his future mentor into drawing hunter fire,” Lydia sniffs. While curling her fingers around and giving the underside of his wrist two efficient jabs with her nails, stabbing at the tendons hard enough to make him let go of the knob.

He winces and pulls back his hand, but doesn’t look anything except concerned, with a little flicker of amusement, the kind people who’ve known each other for far too many lifetimes see every day in the mirror. “I still miss him, and I know you two don’t, but he helped me a lot,” Scott says, stepping back to let her pass. “But that’s a different guy. And you’re my friend, and—Lydia, they’re so young. It’s not even that they don’t know what they’re doing, it’s that they aren’t even close to ready for it.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here,” Lydia says, going into the house.

She’s barely two steps into the kitchen before Talia stalks into the room. “Well?” Talia snaps. “Aren’t we going?”

Strictly speaking, they have met Talia before. Even though she’d always been dead, werewolf memory tricks and séances and various other workarounds are possible. But that had always been an older Talia. A shadow, but still one that had been caught at the height of her power and fame, with a full pack at her beck and call, and enough experience to consider herself their equals. This isn’t that Talia.

Lydia silently gestures for the other woman to go ahead of her. Talia snorts and strides forward—Peter’s loitering a few yards behind her, half-distracted by something Stiles is saying, but he’s still doing a poor job of not looking nervous—and deliberately lets her arm knock into Scott, even though he’s moved well out of the way. Scott prefers to opt out of dominance displays but even his brows tick up. And when he moves out of the way, he does so by swiveling so he doesn’t give Talia his back.

For all that, Lydia notes, walking into the garage behind Talia, it’s a very brittle show. From this angle she can see how Talia has her shoulders too stiff, bunched up against a blow rather than loose in expectation that none will come. And the woman keeps plucking at the side of her jeans, surreptitiously shifting the seams. It’s almost as if she’s unused to wearing pants.

“Oh, no, other side,” Lydia says, as Talia goes up to the driver’s side of Lydia’s car. Then she goes up to shotgun, digging in her purse. She unlocks her door, tosses the keys across the roof to the startled woman, and then gets inside with phone in hand.

Talia doesn’t hesitate to get behind the wheel and start the car, but she’s a little disjointed about it. And once they’ve backed out onto the road, she looks over at Lydia. “Now what are you doing?”

“Following up on some official strings I’m pulling about all the out-of-towners who have and will be going missing,” Lydia mutters. She’s just as frustrated as Stiles about the level of technology, but unlike him, she doesn’t find whining aloud to be much of an outlet for that. It just—makes her wish they weren’t limited to what they could carry when they jumped.

“No, I meant what’s the purpose of giving me a little slack,” Talia says, smoothly swapping lanes with a slow-moving car, and then moving back into their original lane. They’re speeding up, but it’s controlled and Talia doesn’t sound…she’s simmering something unpleasant, but it’s not hysterics. “I’m a werewolf, you don’t think I’m not familiar with this kind of trick?”

“Or, I can’t do this and drive, and you’re motivated to get there in a hurry, so I’m simply dividing up the work in a logical way,” Lydia says, glancing up from her phone. She clocks the police car coming up on their right and begins to clear her throat, only to find herself mildly impressed when Talia cuts into a store parking lot, squeezes the car through a backalley with minimal loss of speed, and then slides back onto the road, neatly avoiding that problem. “Since certain things clearly run in the family.”

Talia makes a low, irritable noise. “I don’t enjoy you people constantly hinting at knowing things we don’t yet.”

“Well, newsflash, we’re from the future, it comes with the territory unless you want us to forget our original lives,” Lydia says, her patience running out. “And then we’d forget why we’re bothering to help you, and believe me, you do not want to be in the category of people we don’t help. Much less people we go after.”

“At least you’re being straighter with me,” Talia says, shrugging. She works them through the last of the suburbs and then merges into the county road leading to the preserve. “So Peter tells me that you’re not really from our future.”

“And they weren’t really your children we got killed,” Lydia says equably.

Talia makes that noise again. It’s an angry burr, almost a hum, that Lydia’s grown to associate specifically with werewolves and that is more of a feeling than a true sound, with the way it always seems to trap itself in one’s body and then reverberate down the spine. Lydia shifts in her seat, annoyed, and then sighs and looks over at the other woman.

Who isn’t looking at her anymore. Talia’s watching the road with a pensive expression, periodically sucking her lip in between her teeth. She has her hair up in a messy bun—not artful messy, inexperienced messy, like what children playing beauty-shop do to each other. All the other times Lydia’s seen her, she’d had her hair loose down her back. And had looked perfectly at ease with herself, even buck-naked after a full shift.

She’s younger, not just in appearance, but also the air of defensiveness, Lydia thinks. The driving isn’t the only thing that reminds Lydia of Derek. “When we get to the house, do you know what you need to get?

“I have a list of locations and items,” Talia says after a long pause. “Nothing too big, or that will need special handling, so long as boxes don’t get opened. It shouldn’t take more than an hour. Possibly less if your shoes can stand up to the forest.”

Lydia snorts and flexes her toes in her heels, which have survived three timelines so far. “They’ve stood up to worse. And going back to effective division of labor, I see no point in making the person who knows how to lift the protective wards do the carrying. Unless you think you’re up to picking apart Stiles’ work?”

“You’re all not that much older than Peter,” Talia says. “He’s seventeen, you look…college-age?”

“We can buy liquor on our own,” Lydia says.

Talia glances at her. “Legally?”

“Well, that depends on your definition of legal, doesn’t it?” Lydia finishes working through her text messages and voicemail, and then puts her phone away. “Just ask, would you? If you want to have the moral high ground about being straight.”

“Who died, exactly?” Talia says. She’s much too sharp about it, and isn’t able to hide her grimace, either. Her nails lengthen but don’t quite turn to points before they retract to rather ragged-looking ovals. “You said I was always already dead, and Stiles has called Peter evil about a half-dozen times—”

“I’m going to assume you mean in our original world,” Lydia says. She looks at Talia, giving the woman a chance to say otherwise, and then sighs. “Laura was already dead, too.”

Talia breathes in, very deeply, and then out in an exhale so long that Lydia actually considers jabbing her, just to prevent the woman from making herself pass out. Then she resets her shoulders, looking blankly at the road. Which, thankfully, is completely empty.

“So both of them?” she says softly. It’s a question but her tone makes it clear she doesn’t need Lydia to answer it. “Who? Who did it? I know you said you got them killed, but that means—somebody else was after you, right? After my children?”

Then Talia’s hands tighten on the wheel, so suddenly and so hard that the metal inside groans. Lydia drops her hand to the pendant on her necklace, then, when Talia does nothing else, to just rest on the future-tech taser in her purse.

“Was it family?” Talia abruptly says.

“You mean Peter?” Lydia says, startled.

Talia jerks around, and nearly swings the car off the road in the process. She curses and rights the car with an unceremonious yank of one hand, then looks at Lydia with such shock and disgust and anger that Lydia doesn’t need an answer from _her_.

Though obviously, Lydia isn’t going to leave it there. “Let me remind you, we’ve known very different Peters.”

“Well, obviously,” Talia says curtly. “Peter— _my_ brother, he can be a little—but that’s our parents’ fault, if they hadn’t been such conservative—”

“Were you thinking of your parents just now?” Lydia asks.

Talia sucks in her breath, her eyes flicking to Lydia, and then she—just shuts up. She doesn’t say a word, or give any indication that she’d like Lydia to, and she looks perfectly comfortable like that. Derek—across timelines—used the silent treatment like an extra set of claws, but Lydia has to say, his mother makes him look like an amateur.

It’s still a good twenty minutes to the preserve, and they probably have ten minutes of reliable reception. Lydia takes her phone out again and picks through her contacts, then picks two calls where it doesn’t matter if Talia overhears, and just gets a head start on the business she’ll have waiting for her when they get back to the rental. 

The sides of the road go from wooded to near-impenetrable as they wind their way into the preserve. Lydia loses reception just after ending her second call, and can only look at the passing scenery, and…and listen to the growing whispers. She’s long since stopped being disturbed by what she picks up, and she has picked up far worse than what she’s hearing now, but…the difference, she thinks, was that those were isolated incidents, shocking not only for the content, but also for the suddenness of its delivery. What’s wrong with this part of the woods feels as if it’s always been there, growing up with the trees and seeding the earth.

“It didn’t feel like this when I left,” Talia abruptly mutters. Her brows lift as Lydia half-catches herself startling, but the woman doesn’t comment on that. “I left home, by the way. I was pregnant with Derek, and my parents said my mate goes or else, and we picked or else. I’ve only been back a couple days.”

“Peter stayed with your parents?” Lydia says after a second’s thought, remembering a few awkward moments he’d had with Talia’s children.

“He wasn’t old enough to come,” Talia says. Clipped enough to let Lydia know there’s more to that story, but Talia seems to be in the mood to talk about something else and unlike Stiles, Lydia tries not to get hung up on trivia. “My parents left Peter alone in the house overnight. That’s not like them. He gets into everything, and they’re control freaks.”

Lydia considers the other woman. Without an emergency at her back, and away from her children, Talia strikes her as a very deliberate type. She certainly plays her hands with a little more finesse than Peter ever did, even at the height of his persuasiveness; he’d always spoil the sell by forcing it, while Talia already seems to prefer the long game. 

She might actually be fun to work with, Lydia thinks absently. “It wasn’t a relative of yours, as far as we know. They were all dead or—well, Peter was locked up. It was…there was a disease, that only affected supernatural creatures.”

“A disease?” Talia says. She sounds almost amused, and then she confirms she is with a disbelieving laugh. “That sounds like a movie. Wait, that _was_ a movie, and a book. It came from outer space, right?”

“Just a tip, never get Stiles started on Michael Crichton,” Lydia says, as the house appears around the bend. “Also, no, it didn’t.”

Talia looks at her, so Lydia has a full view of the woman’s face when Talia suddenly shifts all the way to wolf, complete with snarling mouth and bared fangs.

The car coasts forward as wolf-Talia writhes around, beating her forelegs against the wheel and the windshield and—she hits a button, the driver’s side window rolls down and Talia shoots through it as soon as she’s able, leaving Lydia to scramble across the gearshift, batting away scraps of clothing as she goes, and stop the car before they hit a tree. By then Talia’s halfway to the house, roaring like a demon.

Lydia slaps open the glove compartment and yanks out the bigger of the two guns stowed in it, then grabs her taser and gets out of the car. She chants under her breath till the outermost line of wards activates, and then backsteps up the lawn and around the side of the house until Talia’s snarls suddenly cut off. Then Lydia swears and abandons caution, running the rest of the way.

She finds Talia on the back porch, standing with her forelegs on the floor and her backlegs on the steps leading up to it. Talia’s tail is tight between her legs, and her head is down too. Lydia still clicks her tongue before she comes any closer, because shocked or afraid alphas are still alphas.

Talia shifts human. It’s—bizarre, a shift only in the functional sense, because the way it happens is like watching a house of cards fall apart. In fact, Lydia jerks forward because she thinks for a second that Talia is actually being shredded by something.

But no, the other woman is whole. Just—in shock, holding her arms around herself, uncaring of how her stretched-out, split clothing is hanging on her as she stares at the two bodies on the porch. Which _are_ shredded, though there’s enough left of the woman’s face for Lydia to guess at the relationship.

Lydia lowers her gun and chants again, checking the wards for any breaks. She doesn’t see any in her first quick scan, but the ones up to the doorway are just passive. “They’d let anybody through if the intent wasn’t malicious,” Lydia mutters, half to herself, half to Talia.

Talia takes in a long, shaky breath. “There’s not enough blood,” she says. “The wood’s all clean underneath. And—and they _weren’t_ here when I came, I couldn’t have missed that.”

“They had to have been brought after Stiles and Scott left last night,” Lydia adds.

Talia whips around, her eyes a raging red, and Lydia is jerking her gun back up, annoyed with herself for assuming the woman has—well, the recovery time of one of them—when she realizes that Talia’s sniffing and staring at something behind and slightly to the side of Lydia.

Lydia pivots around, gun up, and just glimpses a body trying to slip away into the brush. Talia rips out a snarl that seems to boomerang around the forest and the person freezes, then abruptly turns around. It’s another werewolf—a beta, by the eyes, and shifted out but familiar enough that Lydia flicks on her taser and then aims it at Talia. “Wait!”

Talia isn’t going to wait, but Lydia doesn’t want that. She just wants to see what the werewolf does if they get a second in their favor, and the werewolf shifts human. He’s a man about Lydia’s age, very skinny in very dirty, tattered clothes, and he starts to lift his hands and shake his head before he suddenly plunges back into the woods.

“You _bitch_ ,” comes at Lydia’s elbow.

She barely sidesteps Talia’s rush; Talia makes a slight movement to circle back before aborting it and shifting mid-stride to run off into the woods, roaring again. Lydia grimaces and takes a step after Talia, then stops and just watches as Talia’s rush peters off. The wolf leaps around the underbrush for a few minutes, sticking her nose into things and bashing at others with her paws, increasingly angry and confused, before returning to snarl at Lydia.

And Lydia’s taser. “I don’t care if you’re an alpha, this will knock you out of shift in less than a second,” Lydia informs her. “Also, that werewolf didn’t kill your parents and you know it. There’s no way he could’ve taken them both on.”

Talia shifts human. This time it’s so seamless it’d be beautiful, if she somehow didn’t manage to retain her furious snarl the entire time. “His scent and heartbeat just dropped like somebody picked him up and whisked him away,” she snaps. “He knows magic.”

“Obviously,” Lydia says. “But that’s not the kind of magic that did that back there. Trust me, I know.”

“Well, you know so much, do you know who that was?” Talia growls.

Lydia sighs. “Chris Argent? God, of all…he should still be on good terms with his father.”

That manages to floor Talia enough that she stops growling. She stares at Lydia, shakes herself, and then slowly gets to her feet. She’s still angry, but she’s making an effort to keep her hands visible. “You know him. You’ve met him. Versions of him.”

“Yes, we have,” Lydia says. “But that’s not why you need to not go after him right now. You need to stop because those hunters aren’t here for you. They have to be here for _him_. You know what their Code is like.”

“To hell with their Code,” Talia says. She’s letting her teeth get long enough to gnash together, giving her words slurs and razor-sharp edges. “They killed my parents. They must have, they were looking for him and ran into—”

“Do you think _people_ did that?” Lydia says, exasperated. Then she just—she lowers the taser and the gun, and stalks up the porch steps before Talia can reply. “Look, we had some hunter run-ins before I saw you and Peter in the hospital last night, and they told us they’d found your parents dead in the woods.”

Talia’s neck and shoulders bulge in a grotesque, alarming way. Her eyes flare bright as hot coals, and her jaw seems to lengthen and wrench sideways. And then—she fights her shift down, and she looks hard and long at Lydia for a few seconds.

“Why,” she finally says.

“Because we didn’t want to upset you when we already had to tell you we’re from the future,” Lydia snaps. “You would’ve just walked right out of our rental and gotten yourself and your kids caught by another hunter. Which is what’s going to happen now if you don’t get up and help me wrap up your parents and get them into the car. Stiles warded this place to keep people out, not to keep them from hearing you scream murder for miles around.”

And then Lydia doesn’t wait for her. Lydia marches back to the car and puts the taser away—she gets the gun’s holster out, and slings it under her arm—and then pops the trunk and starts getting out the tarp.

“Here,” she says, taking out the spare set of clothes next. They should figure out whether the bulk-goods stores are in the same place, she thinks.

“What about him?” Talia says in a harsh, barely above a snarl voice.

“Do you care about someone who’s being hunted by his own family more than you care about getting back to your children?” Lydia says, turning.

She watches the words hit Talia like a punch to the gut. Talia takes it with a slight snarl, but she’s thinking enough that the anger can’t crest again. “Well, do you?” she says.

“No,” Lydia says. “I care about figuring out what’s going on with him, yes, because that has proven to be important enough times for me to check on it. But that’s not the same, and that doesn’t take priority over getting us out of here.”

Talia turns the bundle of clothing over in her hands, leveling an unflinching stare at Lydia, and then she flicks it out with one hand. With her other, she yanks at what’s left of her top till it’s come off. She pulls the new shirt over her head in a quick motion, and then does the same with her jeans, except that she keeps the scraps long enough to dig something out of a pocket that’s miraculously still intact.

“Here,” she says, giving a piece of paper to Lydia. “First ten of them, you should be able to do that while I’m moving them. Then we’ll go.”

Then she takes the tarp and goes back around the house without another word. Lydia looks at the list: books, and two boxes of heirlooms. “All right, then,” she says under her breath. “Won’t waste the whole trip.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When Lydia talks about sending things back in time, that is not a typo. She is referring to back in their original timeline, before they started time-traveling.
> 
> Referring to _The Andromeda Strain_ there. And Michael Crichton reads very differently once you've actually learned a few things about the branches of science his writing covers.


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles does talk a lot. And know a lot, about a lot of fascinating things, and Peter is completely aware that the man is distracting him and he wishes very much that Stiles wasn’t so good at it. It’s—it’s just humiliating, he thinks. _He’s_ supposed to be the one who does that.

“Hey, if I’m boring you, we can always go back to talking about how, when the divergence point comes, we _gotta_ make sure they go with Blu-Ray,” Stiles says, fiddling with wires and tweezers and some kind of microchip. “Just want to make sure you get the full benefit of our future knowledge and all, seeing as we fully own that we’re the timeline-crashers here.”

“For some reason, I thought proving you’re from the future would be cooler,” Peter mutters.

“It _is_ cool,” Stiles says. “What you mean is, it’s not flashy enough for you.”

“You’ve known me for how long?” Peter says.

“You keep waiting till I look up to make your annoyed faces,” Stiles says. He clicks on a tiny soldering iron and applies it to the chip. “Also, every time I turn this on, your fingers do the want-it twitch. Don’t need to know you to peg that.”

Peter opens his mouth, then shuts it. He’s not doing well at this, and he’s getting so annoyed about it that even he can tell his frustration is keeping him from course-correcting, and he really just—wants to get up and walk away.

Except that, well, Talia actually asked him to do something, and it’s something that makes sense to Peter, that they both need. And anyway, his only other option is to go see what Scott is doing with Talia’s children, and the last time he’d looked in, Scott was improvising dolls out of kitchenware and fetish statuettes for Laura and Derek. He’s not entirely sure what that was about, but it seemed to involve both tea time and prey-stalking strategy, and he honestly doesn’t have any desire to learn more.

“So no questions about your family?” Stiles says, holding up the chip.

“What’s the point?” Peter says. “We’ve established that it’s not really my family, and according to your rule, I’m never going to meet those versions.”

“I said you’re never going to meet _you_ ,” Stiles says. “You can meet everybody else if you feel like it.”

Peter remembers that. He does, really, he just—he makes himself swallow down the annoyed retort and just watches the man put the chip aside and then start packing up the tools. “Well, you’ve done that, would you recommend it?”

“Recommend what?” Stiles says.

“Meeting your family when you’re not there,” Peter says. He’s half-glancing away, checking the clock, when he thinks he sees something odd happen to Stiles face.

By the time he looks over, Stiles has turned away to stick something in a box. But Stiles is—Peter thinks, anyway, that he’s human, and he’s not wearing any kind of scent masker. And he smells a little acrid for a second. Bitterness and grief.

“I guess it depends on the situation, and how you feel about your family,” Stiles says, finally looking over. His face is strange—it’s gone still and smooth, losing all the animation that has had his mouth and brows and sometimes even his nose constantly twitching. “If you don’t care too much about them, maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

Peter gets up, seeing that Stiles is about to, and then steps back till he’s near the doorway. “I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a hint, or an insult, or…anyway, if Talia was always dead when you got there before, I don’t think you would’ve gotten a chance to meet my parents.”

“Yeah? What makes you say that?” And suddenly Stiles is back into the same mode as before, jokey but restless, always ready to jump to the next thought but looking just a little too intent for Peter to think he’s forgotten the last. “I’ll be honest, I thought you guys were always pretty tight, even if you didn’t like each other. You sure as hell hate talking to outsiders, and I’m gonna guess that applies to you, too.”

Stiles stands up, then squats down again, grabbing something from a box—it looks a little like a gun, but it’s got an odd, bulky shape to it—and then waves for Peter to follow him. “We’re werewolves,” Peter reminds the man, reluctantly going along.

“Scott, Peter and I are going out!” Stiles calls at the staircase. Then he turns in the direction of the garage door. “Yeah, yeah, so is Scott, Lydia’s a banshee, and you watched me commit murder last night. So the likelihood that—”

Scott calls back, words garbled but tone clearly alarmed, and Stiles’ entire body snaps about into a defensive position. Peter’s spun around as well, and he’s trying to listen for heartbeats when a small dark blur fumbles into view on the staircase, then bangs loudly down it. He’s got just enough time to pick out a glimpse of Derek’s wide eyes before Derek takes an odd bounce and arcs off the last step, his head aimed squarely at the floor.

Peter’s lunged forward before he can think about it. He’s more than fast enough to intercept the boy, but his hands go down and land on bare floor, and then, as he’s just registering the impossibility of that, he’s suddenly knocked sideways into the staircase by what feels like a cannonball.

It’s not. It’s Derek, doing his best to burrow into Peter’s shoulder, and then Peter takes another hit on his midsection from Laura, who’s appeared out of nowhere to scream. “No!” she shouts. “No! Mom left, no!”

Even muffled into his stomach, she’s deafening. Peter winces and then scrambles for the rail as Derek shifts and throws all of them off-balance. He gets hold of that, but only manages a controlled swing onto the nearest step, because Derek has hustled himself up to press his face into Peter’s neck. Derek’s not nearly as noisy as Laura, but he’s breathing at an alarmingly fast rate.

Peter puts his hand up to check whether the boy is having a fit and Derek shivers, then lets out a whimper. It’s nearly subvocal, it’s so low, but it’s the whimper of a very small, very hurt animal and Peter instinctively purrs in response.

“No,” Laura sobs. She’s a little quieter but no less attached to Peter’s waist. “Mom’s not here, you can’t go too.”

“I…” A clatter overhead makes Peter look up and he sees Scott coming down the stairs, looking concerned. “Did he hurt you?”

Scott freezes. Laura sobs some more, her claws digging hard enough to get through Peter’s jeans, and then she runs out of breath. “No,” Derek says in the sudden lull. “But you can’t go.”

“We were just playing, and they jumped up and took off,” Scott says.

“Well, maybe they don’t like you?” Peter says.

Laura looks up. “Huh? Scott’s nice, what do you mean? He gave us candy.”

“Ah, bribery, I’m sure my sister’s going to approve,” Peter mutters. He’s dimly aware of Scott wincing, but can’t really pay attention to it because Derek’s suddenly jammed his claws through Peter’s sleeve and directly into Peter’s arm. Peter hisses and Derek makes that damned whimper again, and Peter can’t stop himself from purring but he maneuvers his back against the rail and then begins trying to pry his nephew off him. “Well, then Scott will give you more candy if you stay with him, and I don’t have candy, and—”

“But you can’t go,” Derek says, sinking his claws in even deeper. He’s definitely drawing blood now. “You can’t, you’re our uncle.”

“Yes, well—Laura, let _go_ of that,” Peter snaps, dropping a hand to shove hard at Laura’s hand before it rips open his jeans’ outside seam. He jerks his leg away at the same time, only to have Laura grab his wrist and tug it down, a stubborn, defiant look on her face. “Godd—you two need to let me go right now, or I swear, I’ll—”

“If you go, you might not come back,” Laura says.

She’s trying to twist her arms around his hand. He thinks she might be trying to cuddle it, of all things, and then he realizes what she’s really doing and he yanks his arm up into the air. But it’s too late; she’s already managed to lock her arms around his wrist, and she’s actually dangling from that, her feet kicking, mulish expression barely visible above his hand.

“Hey, I don’t think—here, I’ll get them, just—I don’t think you should hold kids like that,” Scott says. He’s come the rest of the way down and is edging around them, making tentative snatches as Laura kicks at him.

“I’m not _trying_ to hold them,” Peter says. He shakes his arm—Scott switches from a weary ‘that’s what I mean’ to a distracted snarl as he holds out his hands to catch a girl who is not coming off—and then drops it so Laura’s back on the ground. “I went out last night and came back and you weren’t nearly this much of a pest about it and—”

“But then we saw Dad,” Derek whispers.

Peter stops and frowns at the boy. “What?”

“We saw him!” Laura says. “We saw him, and Mom said Dad wasn’t ever coming back but we saw him, and she said if anything ever happened with Dad, we were supposed to find family and stay with them and she’s gone and now it’s just _you_. So you can’t go. You can’t! You have to stay, we’ll make you.”

“Who’s their dad?” Scott asks. He’s squatting down, trying to figure out the secret to Laura’s knotted arms, and then he yanks back a bloody finger just as Laura snarls and then bares her fangs at him.

“None of your business,” Peter automatically says. “And what do you mean, you saw him?”

“Yeah, where did you see him?” Stiles says. He’s been standing back this entire time, and from the glimpses Peter got, mostly enjoying the view, but he doesn’t look like he’s humoring Laura with the question. He seems genuinely interested.

Laura can’t see Stiles the way she is, and when she tries to twist herself to see him, she inadvertently loosens her grip. Scott at least is quick enough to seize upon that and he has her off Peter’s arm and in his—so she starts screaming again.

Peter gives up and snarls at her. Laura stops, her eyes widening and then narrowing, and then she juts her head out over Scott’s arm and snarls back. It’s a tiny, high-pitched one, but it has the beginnings of an alpha bark to it.

So Peter snarls again, not out of frustration but out of real disgust. “You are _not_ old enough to order me around,” he snaps at her. “And even if you were, I don’t like it when Dad does that and I’m not going to put up with it just because you’re my sister’s kid.”

Laura blinks hard, her mouth hanging a little open, and then she cringes back into Scott’s chest, a small child again instead of a budding alpha. “I just don’t want you to go,” she says voice as small as Derek’s. “We saw him.”

“Where was that?” Stiles says. He’s curious but calm, which is a nice change from the worried look Scott is shooting Laura.

“The window,” Derek says.

He’s still got his claws in Peter’s arm, and his weight is slowly dragging them down. Peter puts his hands up just to support the boy and Derek scrunches tighter, then abruptly lets go so Peter has to really hold him to keep him from falling. 

“When’d you see him?” Scott says sharply.

Derek looks up at Peter when he answers. He’s strangely solemn, and even though he’s clearly frightened, his eyes and face are dry, not smeared with tears like Laura’s. “A couple minutes ago.”

“You were upstairs,” Stiles says after a second.

“Yeah, not the window with the tree near it, and anyway, nothing went off,” Scott says, frowning. “Besides, I didn’t…”

“You weren’t looking,” Derek says. “You were changing Cora’s diaper.”

“But I didn’t hear or smell—” Scott mutters.

Stiles steps forward, shooting Scott a look. Scott shuts up and Stiles comes up the stairs and looks at Derek, then Laura. “So your dad, he’s not supposed to be around,” he says.

“Mom says he’s never coming back. She says we’re sticking with family from now on, just family,” Laura says. “And she says Peter is family, and she doesn’t like it but she says Grandma and Grandpa might have to be too.”

Peter winces and makes a note to himself to talk to Talia about teaching the kids what keeping a secret means. “I’m flattered, really, but that doesn’t mean you can claw me up.”

“Oh,” Derek says. He sniffs, and then he withdraws his claws and hunches up in Peter’s arms and somehow manages to concentrate an astonishing amount of misery into his expression. “Sorry.”

“But you can’t go, or Dad will get us,” Laura pipes up.

“Well, your dad’s not going to get you,” Stiles announces. He reaches out and plucks Derek from Peter’s arms at the same time; Peter reflexively reaches for Derek back, but falters, flushing, as Stiles raises his brows. Then he turns so he and Derek are facing Laura. “You know why?”

“What are you gonna do, tell him to go away?” Laura says, back to being pugnacious.

Stiles laughs as he sets Derek down on the floor, and then he holds out his hand. “Let me show you something cool,” he says.

And then glowing lines of all colors suddenly appear. They’re all over, on the walls and the floor and the ceiling, and even lapping over the edges of their feet. Derek yelps and jumps, and the lines slide off his feet, then return when he lands. He frowns and jumps again, without the yelp, before bending down to touch one line so it curls over his fingertip instead of his toe.

“So this?” Stiles says. “This is magic. And each line is like mountain ash—please tell me you know about mountain ash—”

Derek and Laura look at him.

“Wow, okay, even as kiddies, you guys have Defcon-5 duh faces,” Stiles says. “Anyway. I was saying. Each line is like mountain ash, except for things that want to hurt you. And if they want to get you, they have to break every line first. So, how long do you think your dad would need to do that?”

Laura and Derek open and shut their mouths at the same time. Derek shakes his head in confusion, while Laura glances around, her fingers curling and uncurling, obviously trying to count. She goes for a few seconds, then gives up with a helpless shrug. “Forever?” she guesses.

“Long enough for Peter and me to get back and kick his—firmly remove him from the premises,” Stiles says, catching the warning look that flits over Scott’s face. “If Scott doesn’t get him first. Now, your mom’s not really gone. We probably are going to get back first, but…anyway, I’m gonna take Peter out for a bit, but I promise to bring him back. And if I don’t, it’s my fault. Deal?”

“You’re not family,” Derek observes.

“But he’s cool,” Laura says, though she’s still a little reluctant. She chews her lip—very much like Talia for a second—and then she raises one finger. “You promise.”

“Yep,” Stiles says.

“Because I’m gonna blame you,” Laura says. “And Mom says that a Hale remembers who owes them.”

Stiles laughs again. “Oh, believe me, I am very familiar with that. So, can we go?”

Laura nods. Derek inches over and then grabs Scott’s hand, but then he sighs and nods, too.

After that, going to school was always going to be an anticlimax. But the ride itself is strangely lowkey, as Stiles doesn’t do the obvious thing at all and quiz Peter about what the children mean, or even who their father is. Stiles still talks, but it’s a running commentary on the town, pointing out buildings that will probably change and spaces where other buildings will be. Which would be interesting, if Peter wasn’t busy puzzling over what Derek and Laura meant about seeing their father, and remembering all of Talia’s odd tics whenever he comes up.

“Hi,” Stiles says to the receptionist when they walk in. “Here to talk about Peter here’s absences?”

The receptionist gives them an uncertain look. “And you are…”

“Lawyer,” Stiles says. He leans over the counter and smiles at her, and even though Peter only gets the side of it, he can still feel the chill. “We do have an appointment.”

The receptionist hurriedly excuses herself and disappears into the principal’s office. “Lawyer?” Peter says. “You don’t look that old.”

“Wait for it,” Stiles says, just as the skeptical-looking principal comes out. They’re ushered into the principal’s office, and then Stiles puts his hand out. “Hi, private investigator.”

“What?” the principal says. “You told Mary you’re a lawyer.”

“Yeah, well, you told that woman in Santa Jolla you’re not married,” Stiles replies, to which the principal just goes very pale.

Thirty minutes later they’re back in the car, and it’s only that long because Peter decided if he has to go through with school, he might as well get some things from his locker. All in all, it’s the easiest talk he’s had with the administration since Talia left; they certainly got far better treatment than even his parents rate—when his parents bothered to use their influence on Peter’s behalf, anyway.

“I could’ve sworn you’re human,” Peter says.

“I am. And it’s not the time-travel either. We were near the school yesterday and Lydia’s a banshee, she can pick up on dirty little secrets like that,” Stiles says, snapping his fingers. Then he frowns and looks at Peter, and just stops himself from saying something.

“Am I…supposed to know about banshees?” Peter guesses.

Stiles shrugs. “Well, up to you. But you are usually interested in that kind of thing.”

“Is there something wrong with that?” Peter says sharply. “Considering the show _you_ put on back at the house.”

“Hey, it’s not the method, it’s the intent,” Stiles says, shrugging again. “Why, you sensitive about this?”

“Shouldn’t you know?” Peter snaps.

Stiles rolls his eyes and lets that slouch him deeper in the driver’s seat so they’re practically the same height. He really isn’t that much older—Peter can’t decide whether or not the man’s old enough to drink, and Stiles certainly still acts a lot more like the seniors at school than like…like Talia. “Peter, either I know you because of my time-traveling or I don’t know you at all. And before you say it’s obviously not that simple, no, it’s not. But that’s the difference between being factual and being truthful, okay? Otherwise we all go insane.”

“Fine, well, is it really that _easy_?” Peter asks.

“Nope.” Stiles reaches for the keys, then stops and looks at Peter instead. “No. And I’m gonna slip, and sometimes I’ll be needling you on purpose, and you can call me out, hold it against me, take it as motivation to prove me wrong. But hey, you know who you are, even if you’re not sure about me.”

And then he opens his mouth, and Peter just doesn’t know. It’s just—nobody ever talks to Peter like this. Well, all right, Talia’s had some moments since she came back, but it’s been less than a day for that and Peter’s still getting used to her, too. It’s just a lot of change all of a sudden. And being a werewolf doesn’t mean Peter’s used to that. If anything, werewolves tend to be more conservative than people, sticking with what hasn’t gotten them in trouble.

“I’ve gotten into trouble for magic before,” Peter says, just as Stiles finally turns on the engine. “I wasn’t—trying. Believe me, if I’d been trying, I would’ve done a lot worse. I was just trying to learn, and…people don’t seem to like that.”

“People?” Stiles says casually.

Peter rolls his eyes, because Stiles might be weirdly on the level—and all right, very good at scaring other people—but he’s not exactly smooth. “Fine, my parents. If you were wondering why Talia and I aren’t wringing our hands over them being missing, well, Talia’s an alpha who can full-shift, and even she couldn’t get any respect out of them. She ran off with the first one who said he’d change a diaper once in a while.”

“Didn’t like the father, I take it,” Stiles says.

“No.” Peter shifts his armful of binders and textbooks, and then bends down to just set that all on the floor for now. “Did you ever meet him?”

Stiles glances over and he’s got an odd speculative look on his face. It’s not threatening, really, and then at the same time, it does make Peter flush and almost duck his head, and he’s a little puzzled as to why. They aren’t flirting—Peter knows flirting. And Stiles isn’t even his type, he thinks. He likes them shorter, less…well, argumentative. Less likely to show him up as an idiot, since he gets enough of that from his parents. Even if objectively, Stiles is—is hot, and Peter almost-flushes again and is completely disgusted with himself, because he’s never been embarrassed about what he likes before.

“So there’s stuff that’s the same, and stuff that’s almost the same, and stuff that’s never the same. I don’t know why, but you just notice these patterns,” Stiles eventually says. He turns around to check what’s behind them as he backs out of the space, muttering about mandatory rearview cameras, and Peter uses the moment to scrub angrily at his cheek. “Like Talia’s always been around, and Derek and Laura and Cora, and you, but the rest of the family changes. Sometimes you’ve got other siblings.”

“Besides Talia?” Peter says, letting a disbelieving snort slip out. “Who else would put up with our parents?”

“Well, they change. And Talia’s baby daddy, he changes too,” Stiles says. “So honestly, not sure we even have enough to get into an existential crisis on this one. Sorry.”

“You don’t really need to know that much about Mark,” Peter says a few minutes later, during which Stiles doesn’t press him. “Just…he was the kind, he talked a good game, but there’d be little…I never really thought he was fine with Talia being an alpha.”

Stiles glances at him. “He wasn’t one?”

“No, he was beta. Well. Sort of. He was separated from his pack but Talia always insisted he wasn’t omega,” Peter mutters, and then he looks back at Stiles. “So, you’ve killed a Peter?”

“Yeah, a couple,” Stiles says. Not too fast, not too slow. Just straight about it. Almost bored.

Peter’s not exactly surprised, but he’s not sure…he’s not sure he’s upset either. He might have an ego, but he’s not stupid, and he might think he deserves better but he knows other people don’t agree with him. “Did I ever manage to do anything important first?”

“Important to you, or…” Stiles says, a little interest coming into his face.

“Whichever. Just—it wasn’t stupid, was it? Why you ended up killing me?” Peter says. “It wasn’t just because I, I don’t know, because I accidentally shot myself while cleaning a gun and then you mercy-killed me?”

“Uh, no, that one did not come up,” Stiles says. He laughs a little, and then he throws a quick smile Peter’s way. “And I never killed _you_ , remember. Actually, I usually kind of liked Peter, or at least parts of Peter, and then that was why it was always so damned annoying when he ended up doing shit I couldn’t put off.”

“Oh,” Peter says. He lets a few seconds pass, then can’t help himself. “So did he care that you liked him?”

Stiles doesn’t immediately answer. He knows what Peter’s trying to needle but he doesn’t look that upset. But then, Peter’s starting to realize that the man has abnormal reactions. “He was always a lot older, and he—we never met him until after a lot of shit had happened to him,” Stiles finally says. “I don’t think he knew how to do certain things anymore. But he was smart, you know, it’s not like he didn’t know that about himself, and I don’t think he really cared. I know he could’ve changed it if he felt like it, but he didn’t.”

“That…reminds me of my parents, a little,” Peter mutters. And then he grimaces as he hears himself, and follows the logical end of that thought, and…he looks away, out through the window. “Look, what I said—they’re still my parents, and Dad’s the alpha. We need to find them. It’s important.”

“Yeah, well, we’re on it,” Stiles says. He’s silent for a few seconds, and then he starts talking about the town-to-be again.


	8. Chapter 8

Laura and Derek are still edgy after Stiles and Peter leave, and Scott does his best to try to lure them back into a game, but they’re stubborn. They do at least insist on sticking together—well, Laura insists, while Derek silently refuses to move more than a few feet from her or Cora—and that at least makes it easy to watch them.

At first Scott figures he’ll just move them to the living room so they can watch TV and be away from the scene of…whatever had happened, but then he realizes that if he does that, he can’t investigate the window without going out of their sight. They don’t seem as attached to him as to Peter, but they still start fretting whenever he even goes up to the doorway. So then he thinks they’ll just have to stay upstairs, but Cora wakes up and she’s hungry.

And anyway, he’s not really much of a magic-user, even now, and so he just shoots a couple texts off to Lydia to update her, and then ushers the kids into the kitchen. That room’s on the same side of the house as the upstairs window, so he at least can crack open the kitchen window and try and smell for scents from there while he’s making the kids lunch.

Predictably, Scott doesn’t pick up much of anything that way. Sure, he smells a couple suspicious trails, but they’re all faint and with so many hunters in town, he can’t really narrow down the source without leaving the house. Or getting more information.

“Mom said not to talk about Dad anymore,” Laura says, shooting a stern look at Derek.

Scott works a spoonful of mush into Cora’s mouth and then bobs it to push in the bits that she pokes out with her tongue. “How come?”

“Because…Mom said,” Laura says, with enough of a contemptuous look to make sure he knows she knows what he’s trying to do.

And he isn’t exactly the expert at this either, he thinks with a sigh. “Well, when’s the last time you saw your dad?” he tries. “Besides today. The last time before that.”

“We’re not supposed to talk about him,” Laura repeats.

“I know, but I’m not asking about him. I’m—I’m asking about when you last saw him,” Scott says, doing his best to think like Stiles. “You don’t have to talk about him. Just tell me what day was it.”

Laura thinks that over, chewing on her chicken stir-fry. “I think it was Thursday.”

“No,” Derek suddenly says, shaking his head. He ignores his sister’s frantic gestures and stands up on his chair to reach for his glass, then smiles as Scott nudges that into his hand. “No, it was…it was Wednesday.”

Then Derek smiles again, while his sister bounces over from her chair and hugs him, squealing with glee. Scott looks at them and he thinks that he loves kids, but grown-up Derek has honestly aggravated the living daylights out of him from time to time, and sometimes Scott really does understand when Stiles complains about multiverse fuckwithery.

“Okay, then, we’ll just…” Scott starts, wiping off Cora’s mouth.

He’s going to give them dessert, because they might be difficult but they’re also obviously having a difficult time with their family right now, and it’s not like werewolves have issues with cavities or slow metabolisms. But right then his phone rings from the counter—cellphones are so big in this time that they aren’t comfortable to keep in a pants-pocket when sitting—and he isn’t expecting a call so he scrambles to get it.

“ _Mr. McCall_?” says a half-familiar male voice.

Scott still wants to add in a ‘doctor,’ but just stops himself. “Alan?”

 _“Yes. Yes, it’s me, and I know you said you’d call me first, but I’m out at the preserve and I thought you should know that there’s been some kind of—some kind of fight near the Hale house,”_ Deaton says, both urgent and uncertain. _“A lot of hunters are heading over there.”_

“Don’t go see,” Scott says immediately. His thumb goes to the button and then he pauses. “But thanks for calling. I know you don’t know us at all, but—thanks.”

 _“I came to help, and if I can’t help Talia, I…suppose I can at least lend an ear to an alpha male who genuinely doesn’t seem to want to challenge her,”_ Deaton says.

Then he hangs up. Scott looks at the phone, pressing his lips together, and then tries to call Lydia. He gets a message that the caller is not available, which means she and Talia must still be pretty deep in the preserve. So he calls Stiles, who picks up halfway through what sounds like his standard rant about the industrial district.

 _“Okay, Peter and I are almost home anyway,”_ Stiles says. _“But just so you know, I’m not getting anything off the house wards. So either it wasn’t a fight, or the fight was at least fifty yards from the house.”_

Peter’s asking what are they talking about in the background, sounding excited, and then Laura screams.

Scott’s so startled that he drops his phone. He hisses and immediately grabs for it, but Derek screams too, and it’s enough to throw off his aim and make him slap the phone into one of the kitchen cabinets instead of catching it. He’s backpeddling towards the table at the same time, trying to put himself between whatever the…Laura’s no longer looking at whatever it was, too busy trying to wrestle with a frightened, whining, frantic-to-crawl-away Cora, but Derek’s still up and pointing at the kitchen window.

“There!” he says to Scott. “There! Dad!”

Scott shifts out and growls, even though he still doesn’t see anything. The window’s clear, nothing visible through it except for the backyard, and—the breeze shifts and Scott smells verbena.

“Who are you?” Scott demands.

“I’m not here to hurt anybody,” comes a response.

Scott goes still. So does Derek, and then he hops off his chair and crawls under the table to Scott’s side, and almost goes to the window before Scott grabs him back. “That doesn’t sound like Dad,” Derek mutters. “Who’s that?”

“I didn’t kill them either,” says the voice. It’s somebody Scott knows, he recognizes that much, but he can’t place it. “I just—I want to talk, and explain, but I can’t do that if you kill me first.”

“Kill who?” Scott says, partly to stall for time. He’s trying to think of who else they know who’d be around in this time. So many people wouldn’t be around just because they wouldn’t be old enough yet—but the ones who have been, he just doesn’t think he’d know them well enough to recognize an aged-down voice.

“The Hales,” the voice says after a long pause.

“Mommy!” Laura screams. “You killed Mom!”

Derek doesn’t scream, but he skitters back under the table and grabs Cora, hunching with her as Laura stands in front of both of them and keeps screaming, so loudly that Scott thinks even human neighbors will hear. And it’ll probably scare off whoever is outside—Scott hesitates, then goes for the kitchen door.

He makes sure to kick it shut behind him—they have the child locks on so the kids won’t get out—and then he rushes blindly forward a few yards before pulling up and whipping quickly around. The verbena scent had swung around him and the rough turn sends blades of grass and bits of dirt up into the air, before they fall in an unnaturally humped pattern.

Scott leaps onto the person, who shimmers a little before whatever they’re using completely falls apart, leaving behind a very dirty, thin, coughing…glowing blue eyes stare wildly up at Scott, who stares back, because that glow is nowhere near enough to hide the man’s face. “Chris?”

Chris Argent freezes, then snarls and works a hand free enough to swipe at Scott’s face. “How do you—”

“Long story, but first just _stop_ ,” Scott says. He ends on a snarl, and lets that snarl carry him into a further shift.

He’s never developed the full alpha form that other alphas have, for some reason. Stiles thinks it might be connected to the fact that he’s alpha by will, so his ‘alpha’ form is whatever he wants it to be, and it just so happens that Scott’s mostly fine with the so-called beta shift. But he’s figured out all the other trappings at this point and he looms over Chris till the other man shifts human.

Whining, jerking his chin up in submission even as he keeps struggling to get out from under Scott. “I didn’t kill them, they were already dead,” Chris hisses. “I didn’t, I didn’t, I just—”

“Who’s dead?” Scott snarls. “Talia and Peter?”

Chris’ fighting slows for a second as he stares up at Scott, clearly surprised, and a cold, heavy clench unwinds from around Scott’s heart. If they’d been too late _again_ , Scott starts to think—and then he shakes his head, at the same time that Chris shakes his.

“What?” Chris says. “No, Talia—she was trying to kill _me_ and I just wanted to—”

“Well, then who are you talking a—” Scott winces as wood cracks loudly behind him.

He doesn’t get off Chris, or make the mistake of looking behind him. Chris surges up against Scott’s grip, expecting that, and goes slack with surprise when Scott goes with the movement, grabbing the other man and hauling him up till they’re both on their feet. Then Scott swings him around, pushing him forward so he’s both off-balance and where Scott can easily wrap arms around him from behind.

Also, where Scott can get a good look at the kitchen door. The kids can’t unlock it, but magic can’t stop them from beating it out of the frame, and they seem to be pretty close to doing that. It’s a good sturdy door, but he can see one of the hinges skewing and the lower panels are bulging outwards.

“I didn’t kill them, any of them!” Chris is saying. “Talia’s alive, she was chasing _me_ , and I haven’t seen Peter and when I saw their parents they were already—”

“Oh, you meant them,” Scott says.

Chris stops talking and makes a short, disbelieving noise, his hands loosening from where they’d been wrenching at Scott’s grip. Then he cranes his head around to look at Scott. “You already—”

“Mommy!” Laura shouts.

And that’s when Peter comes running around the corner, wolfed-out and wild-eyed, dragging Stiles who’s trying to haul him back by one arm. He sees Scott and Chris, obviously was expecting something else, and then trips over the edge of the back patio.

“See?” Chris gasps. “See, he’s still alive. And I told you, Talia’s not—”

“What about my sister?” Peter snaps. He flails himself back straight, and then shakes off Stiles, who’s standing down. Then he jerks his head down, wincing, as Laura lets out another scream.

“Okay, okay, can we just stop yelling?” Stiles says, stalking over to the door. He undoes the locks and grabs the knob, and then jerks it, sending Laura tumbling out over Derek’s head; the two of them were apparently shoving together.

Stiles steps over the kids and goes inside, where Cora is still wailing. Cora stops wailing. Scott hisses, then lets go of Chris. Then hisses again and grabs Chris back by the arm before the man can go anywhere, while Peter lunges and catches Derek and Laura just before they would’ve run out past him.

“Get back inside,” Peter tells them, and when Laura opens her mouth, Peter leans down and snarls in her face.

“But—but Mommy,” Derek says. He and Laura both cringe from Peter, and then he puts his arm up over his face and starts to cry.

Peter sucks in his breath, looking at them. He still has them by the backs of their shirts and he clearly doesn’t have any idea what to do, his hands jerking uselessly at their clothes. Then he stifles an annoyed noise and twists sharply around, putting himself in front of them as he faces Scott and Chris.

“Who the hell are you?” Peter says, looking at Chris. “Are you so stupid you don’t know which pack holds this territory?”

“Wait, you all haven’t met yet?” Stiles says, coming back out with Cora in his arms.

“I know who you are, Hale,” Chris snaps. Then he stiffens and shoots Scott a wary glance. He’s not fighting Scott’s grip anymore, but he’s got his arm angled so that the rest of his body is leaning as far from Scott as he can. “And I just saw your sister and she looked pretty alive to me, considering she was trying to kill me for something I didn’t even—”

Stiles looks sharply at Scott, who starts to mouth a warning. But he’s interrupted when Peter sniffs, goes very still, and then suddenly takes Derek and Laura and just about flings them back into the kitchen. Derek knocks into Stiles’ legs along the way, sending Stiles crashing into the doorway as he tries to not drop Cora, and all three children start sobbing.

In the meantime, Peter’s dropped into an aggressive crouch, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he snarls. His eyes are glowing furiously and he’s obviously waiting for any excuse to lunge. “What did you do to my parents?”

“I _didn’t_ ,” Chris says. He pulls at the arm Scott’s holding, then abruptly dives towards Scott, who grabs the man before realizing Chris isn’t attacking so much as trying to put Scott between himself and Peter. “Look, I just got bit a month ago, does it goddamn look like I could take on your parents?”

“Then why do you smell like their blood?” Peter snarls.

“Because I—” Chris flinches as Peter takes a step forward, all but burrowing himself into Scott’s side. “I didn’t kill them!”

“Wait,” Scott says. And then, when Peter takes another step, Scott sighs and hooks his arm over the back of Chris’ neck, pushing Chris’ head down to about chest-level. He leans over Chris and snarls in warning, and then, for good measure, pops the claws on his free hand. “ _Wait_. Wait, okay, we need to figure out—”

“Anyway, it wasn’t him,” Stiles says. He’s put Cora down on her feet and is twisting back and forth, trying to keep an eye on them and deal with the kids at the same time. “We know, okay? Not time-travel, we caught hunters earlier and they said they _found_ your parents’ bodies.”

“And I didn’t even see that,” Chris adds urgently. “I only saw them after my father’s men had them. They took them, all right? They had them hanging in chains in this old building and I just—I just was bringing them back to your house before the bodies got cut up—”

Peter’s too angry to think straight. Scott is looking right at Peter’s face and he knows that expression too well. “Let’s just go inside—Peter, the kids,” Scott says. “ _Peter_. The kids, they’re upset, Talia’s not here—”

“Your father’s men?” Peter says slowly. “Cut up—you’re a _hunter_.”

“I was, sure, but did you notice the goddamn claws and fangs and shift?” Chris snaps.

And Chris is getting angry again too, powered by frustration, and Scott is already forcing the man’s head down before Peter’s snarl abruptly drops an octave. Scott snarls back, but he knows that’s no longer going to be a deterrent.

“Damn it, fine,” Stiles says. “Have it your way.”

Scott jerks his head up and looks over just as Stiles swivels out of the way, letting two dark blurs tackle Peter’s legs from behind. Peter goes over, nearly hits the ground face-first, then catches himself on his hands, growling. His claws swipe back and Scott shoves Chris down, ready to leap forward and grab _Peter_ —and then Peter stops himself just before he would’ve slashed Derek and Laura.

“Mommy,” Laura whines. “Want Mom.”

“Well, I’m not her,” Peter says, struggling to push himself back. His voice is still way too harsh, but it’s dying back from rage to frustration. He tries to pry Derek off his leg, and then gives that up and just squats awkwardly where he is. His eyes flick from Chris to Scott, and then he twists sharply around to look at Stiles, who raises his brows. Peter twitches as if Stiles slapped him instead, then suddenly flings his arm out and points at Stiles. “You—you—you knew since when? You knew my parents were dead and you didn’t tell me or Talia or—”

“We were going to. It’s just not, you know, something that naturally follows after explaining we’re time travelers or trying to get you people out of sight before hunters catch up,” Stiles says. He’s being too irritated about it—Scott can tell that Stiles is being defensive, but he also knows just about anybody else will take it as condescension.

And that’s exactly how Peter takes it, from the incredulous way Peter flips his hand, then jerks it back to press at the side of his face. “You—you _asshole_ ,” he says. “I can’t believe I actually was starting to _like_ —”

“We’re sorry,” Scott interrupts. He waits till Peter looks at him, and then gets down so that they’re at the same eye-level. “We should have said something sooner. Look, telling you right after the accident wasn’t—”

“But there was time after that,” Peter says accusingly. “We could’ve—Talia and I could’ve…all these _hunters_ who killed our parents, we could’ve started—”

“It wasn’t them,” Chris says. He’s still plastered against the ground where Scott shoved him, his nose and mouth barely above the grass. His head dips when they look at him, but then his shoulders roll in a deep breath. “I told you. They found your parents after they were already killed.”

“Of _course_ they’d say that,” Peter says scornfully. “Of course _you’d_ say that.”

Chris lets out a sharp, frustrated exhale. “No, I know that because I’ve seen the thing that killed them. I’ve seen it, all right, it’s the same thing that was keeping you in your house.”

Peter chokes mid-snarl, he’s so surprised. He stares blankly at a very tense Chris, then hisses as Derek takes advantage of Peter’s distraction to switch from Peter’s leg to Peter’s arm.

“I saw it,” Chris says again. He pauses, looking warily at all of them. “Got a better idea about what it is than you do, I bet. And I’ll help you, just…these hunters, they’re from my father and they’re after _me_.”

“Well, that’s standard for the course, anyway,” Stiles mutters.

Peter whips around and glowers at Stiles, and he’s vehement enough about it that Stiles’ brows rise. He makes a few inarticulate, angry noises, before abruptly scooping his arms under Derek and Laura. He stands up and stalks with them inside, brushing past Stiles without looking at the man.

Stiles presses his lips together and doesn’t look after Peter. Instead he stares out at the backyard, a little blank-looking, before he shrugs and steps across the threshold and starts walking towards the far edge. “I’m gonna try and call Lydia,” he says to Scott. “Also, double-check the perimeter. You good with the house?”

“I can deal, but Stiles,” Scott says. He suppresses a sigh when Stiles refuses to look at him. “ _Stiles_. Stiles, would you just—he’s not—he’s upset—”

“Yeah, his _parents_ are dead, who wouldn’t be?” Stiles says, so breezy it’s worse than a knife.

Scott sighs and just gives up on that for now. He listens to the people in the house—Peter’s snapping at the kids, telling them to stop crying before he gets a migraine, but he sounds weary more than anything—and then he looks down at Chris, who’s rolled half-over.

“Who are you?” Chris says. “Shouldn’t Talia be alpha now?”

“She is, and I’m also an alpha, and we’re just kind of lending a hand to her and Peter,” Scott says. Then he tries not to wince. “Kind of. Just—never mind, I’m Scott, let’s get you inside. You look pretty bad.”

“Scott?” Chris says. He tenses up and doesn’t move when Scott holds out a hand to him. “You said…time travel?”

“It’s a really, really long story, and I think it’d go better if you were eating while we explained. The important thing is, I already know what your father’s like and as long as you don’t hurt people who don’t deserve it, I won’t hurt you. And I won’t let anybody else hurt you,” Scott says.

He holds his hand out again, then drops it a few more inches. It’s an awkward position, even with werewolf strength and flexibility, but he holds it while Chris sucks in a breath and flicks his eyes to and fro across Scott’s face, and then…reaches up and grabs Scott’s hand.

“Thanks,” Scott says, smiling.

“What?” Chris says. He huffs as he gets to his feet, then does a bad job of hiding how he sways a little, obviously dizzy. “For what?”

“Well, not threatening to kill me right off, for once,” Scott mutters under his breath. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

* * *

“Talia,” Lydia says halfway through the drive back. “I think you might want to listen to this.”

She twists back her arm so that Talia, who is sitting in the back of the SUV with her parents’ bodies, can reach the phone. Talia ignores it; she can hear the voice on the other end and it’s not Peter or her children, so she doesn’t care.

Lydia waits a few seconds, then sighs and pulls her arm back and hangs up. They don’t talk for the rest of the way.

The car goes up the driveway and Talia hears the garage door crank up, and Lydia starts to drive forward. Then she slams on the brakes, swearing under her breath, and at the other end of the garage Talia recognizes her brother’s heartbeat leaping.

Talia bangs up the back of the SUV, then slides out and twists around. “Peter,” she says. “Peter, our parents—”

“They’re dead, I know,” Peter says. A low concrete platform stretches across one end of the garage and he’s sitting on the edge of it, his knees pulled up to his chest. He muffles a snort into his knees. “I guess _everybody_ knows now.”

“We found the bodies,” Talia says after a moment. “On the back porch, and then Lydia told me—”

Peter’s head goes up, and then the rest of him follows. He rolls out of the way of the SUV, which Lydia is pulling in, and then he nearly gets his shoulder shaved by the descending garage door as he comes around to the back end. Talia goes up to him and lifts her hand up to hover over his shoulder as he stares down at the tarp-wrapped bundles. She lowers her fingers, then starts to take them back.

“Stiles told me,” Peter says, almost casual. He tilts his head in a strangely curious way, like an animal who can’t even decide whether something is friend or foe. “Well. No. Chris told me. Chris Argent. And then Stiles.”

And then, just as her hand reaches her hip, Peter abruptly turns and he looks at her. His entire face is tightened up as if someone’s winched the skin back over the bones, and in the middle of it his eyes are—are so confused. They’re asking her how, and she doesn’t have any answers for him.

Talia lifts her hand again and Peter crumples, his hands going to her upper arms, his head tucking into her neck. He’s not crying, she can’t feel any moisture, but he’s trembling badly, and when she wraps her arms around him, he shivers so hard that he loses his balance for a second. She tightens her hold and Peter whines very softly, the whine of a very, very small child who’s frightened of the unknown.

They stand there for God knows how long, right next to their parents’ bodies. Talia dimly registers the house door opening and shutting. She counts heartbeats inside the house, but once she’s recognized all three of her children and can tell that they’re healthy, she doesn’t check anymore.

“I _hated_ them,” Peter eventually says, the words barely squeezing out against Talia’s neck. He shifts his head, then drops one hand from Talia’s arm. “I was going to run away, as soon as I turned eighteen. I just—I couldn’t stand them anymore, Talia, and I was going to run away and—and make my own pack if I had to, just like you, and show them—and they’re never even going to—and I hated them but Mom and Dad—”

“I know,” Talia says. “I know.”

Peter sucks in his breath. He’s still not crying but he’s very ragged. “They’re—they were still Mom and Dad and Dad was alpha and—and—”

“I know, Peter. Even if you hate them, they’re still pack and family. And I could’ve killed Dad a thousand times over, if I thought Mom wouldn’t kill me after, but I’m going to kill whoever killed them. I swear, right here, on the heads of my children,” Talia says. She rubs Peter’s back and the trembling slowly starts to go away. “ _We’re_ going to kill them. Pack might hate each other, but nobody deals with pack but pack. All right?”

He nods. Then he sucks another breath, and shakily pulls himself back. “I know. I know. I—you’re not mad, are you? That I wasn’t going to find you?”

“Peter,” Talia says, her voice getting a little shaky. “Peter, it doesn’t matter where you are, or what you’re doing, you’re pack and brother. All right?”

“Yeah,” Peter says after a second. “Yeah. Yeah, all—listen, Talia, Chris—”

She suddenly remembers what else he’d said, and lunges for the door. “ _Argent_?” she snarls. “There’s an _Argent_ with my kids—”

“He’s a werewolf now!” Peter shouts, just as Talia bursts into the house and skids into the kitchen.

Scott bolts up from the table, one clawed hand slamming back down so all the dishes rattle. The dirty, thin man she’d seen with her parents’ bodies at the house skitters off the next chair down and hunches up against the counter behind Scott, while…her kids aren’t there.

“They’re in the living room,” Lydia says, and then she moves over so that a happily-screaming Laura can pelt out and jump up so a startled Talia can catch her. “Well, were.”

Laura’s closely followed by Derek, who is slower partly because he’s more aware of the Argent and he scuttles around the edge of the room, coming up behind Peter before dodging him and finally grabbing Talia’s leg.

“I didn’t kill them,” Chris Argent says. “I know you saw, but I was just bringing them back. They were already dead, and my father’s men had them chained up to cut up, and I…I was just…I figured…”

Talia rubs her face all over her daughter’s neck, muscles loosening that she hadn’t even realized were steel-tight, and then she sets Laura down and picks up Derek. While she’s doing the same to him, she glimpses Stiles carrying Cora over.

She puts Derek down and takes Cora, and then turns back to Argent. “You’re a werewolf.”

Argent’s eyes flicker with glow, and his teeth briefly lengthen. He can’t be that long turned, she notes; his heartbeat is reasonably well-controlled, probably from hunter training, but his scent is spiking wildly with fear and nerves and simmering resentment. “I came down to make a deal with your parents. My father’s after me.”

“Your Code requires you to shoot yourself,” Talia observes.

The man stiffens, but his voice remains steady enough. “Well, obviously I’m not following it anymore. Look, I took your parents’ bodies before they could get mutilated, and I’ve seen the thing that killed them and was after your brother. I’ll help you if you help me.”

“Mom?” Laura whispers, tugging at Talia’s pants-leg. “Mom? Are people going to hurt us?”

Talia—actually forgot about her children. She stares at Argent without seeing him, just—she forgot about her children.

“Is it a monster?” Derek says. “Did it chase Dad away?”

Laura hisses, and when Talia looks down, she’s elbowing her brother, who side-steps and then grabs his side, looking hurt. Then Derek senses Talia and looks up, and cringes before putting his hand over his mouth.

“Sorry, sorry,” Derek mutters, shaking his head. “Sorry, I won’t talk about him anymore.”

“Where is your mate?” Argent says, frowning. “If he’s still out around town, my father’s men—”

“He’s not mate,” Talia says sharply, looking back up. She’s fully aware that Peter is staring curiously at her, and that he’s not the only one, but she—she can’t deal with this. She has so much already on her plate, and she just—she can’t. “He’s not a concern. So you want sanctuary. Is that what you’re saying, omega?”

Argent’s eyes flash. Scott had eased off his challenge stance, but he firms that up again, while somehow managing to look sad about it. “Talia, he’s offering to help,” he says.

“His family’s been terrorizing packs for years, and now that he’s on the other side, well,” Talia snorts.

“It’s not that,” Argent says. “It’s a vendetta. You understand that, don’t you? That’s something we both respect.”

“Vendetta?” Peter says curiously. “Against your own father?”

“He stopped being my father when he shot my mother in the head,” Argent snaps.

Scott twists around and looks at him, horrified and stricken in a way that—such an odd alpha, Talia thinks absently. As for the other two, Lydia and Stiles glance at each other, and then Lydia clears her throat.

“Scott,” she says. “Kids.”

“Oh,” Scott says, grimacing. He looks between Argent and Talia, and then takes a step towards Talia. “Look, if you want, I can take the kids into the next room. You two need to work this out, we…we aren’t going to get involved.”

“Why not?” Peter snorts. “What’s so special about him?”

“Don’t be jealous,” Stiles says, and then he flaps his hand as Peter turns an outraged face on him. “It’s not Chris so much as his father, all right? Gerard’s a king of cockroaches in any world, and we’ve learned the hard way that you have to go at him with a united front or else.”

Lydia nods, taking up a position against the side of the doorway into the hall. “The hard way,” she says. “And you know, even if people are different…it doesn’t make it easier when they’re killed and you can’t stop it. If anything, it’s worse.”

She’s no less controlled than she’s been so far, but there’s something—something raw about it. Like diamond cutting diamond, Talia thinks. And the most convincing part is that Lydia doesn’t make any attempt to soften it.

“All right, Derek, Laura, I need to talk now,” Talia says. “And nobody’s getting hurt, all right? I’m your mother, I would never let that happen.”

“Mom—” Laura starts, clearly about to whine.

“If you’re good, I’ll tell you about it later,” Peter interrupts. “And if you’re not, I’m going to just tell Derek.”

Derek blinks hard, while Laura looks at him and makes a face and then pointedly about-faces and marches herself into the other room. Scott comes over and takes Cora from Talia, and then ushers the still-shocked Derek after Laura.

“Don’t pit them against each other, Laura’s already bossy enough,” Talia mutters. “Though…well-played.”

Peter’s expression flicks from put-upon to knowing to startled. Then he shakes himself, and steps up to Talia’s elbow as they both turn back to Argent, who’s been watching the whole thing with the kind of bitter awe that a person emerging from a wasteland to a feast would have.

“When I got bit, I also got knocked out,” Argent says after a few more seconds of silence. “By the time I woke up, I’d turned. My mother found me and—and she said they weren’t going to follow the Code with me, that she thought I could learn to control myself. And then my father shot her and took over.”

“I thought you had a sister,” Talia says. “Shouldn’t leadership go to her?”

Argent bares his teeth, and it’s not a smile that’s on his face. “Well, Dad shot her too.”

“Stiles,” Lydia says.

“What?” Stiles says. “What? I wasn’t going to.”

“Anyway,” Lydia says, turning back to the discussion. “So Gerard’s in charge of the Argents now.”

Talia raises her brows. “I thought you weren’t getting involved?”

“I’m not. I’m observing. I can observe that we have at least two hostile forces in town, the Argent hunters and this mysterious monster, and that Scott and Stiles and I are good but we can’t be everywhere at once,” Lydia says. “We certainly are pushing it to just cover babysitting duty. But at the end of the day, it’s up to you, Talia. He’s asking for your protection, not ours.”

“Well, isn’t she clever,” Peter mutters.

Talia bumps the back of her hand against his leg, warning him off, but she doesn’t appreciate Lydia’s ‘observations’ either. And then she does, because she’s not stupid. She can’t afford to be, not with so much on the line, and now with her parents dead… they’d been more trouble than she’d thought was worth it, but their reputation alone would have held a lot of people at bay. It makes a lot more sense now why the hunters have been roaming so freely, even daring to take Peter hostage in the hospital.

And she’s just returned to town, and however nasty some of his pranks have been, Peter’s never actually killed another person. “You’re willing to kill your family’s men?” Talia finally asks Chris. 

“If you _don’t_ let me take a shot at my father, the deal’s off,” Chris says, his lips peeling back from his teeth in a vicious smile. “You do, I’ve got all the knowledge of how they do things. And maybe I couldn’t take anything with me, but I always liked to memorize anyway. You rely on a book, you might drop it.”

“What about the thing that killed our parents?” Peter says. “You said you know what it is.”

“I said I saw more of it than you. I—I don’t know exactly what it is, but I saw enough, I’ve got some clues,” Chris says, briefly faltering before his tone and posture get bullish again. “I can save you a lot of time looking into it.”

Talia glances at Peter, who hides his surprise a little better this time. He purses his lips, then shrugs, but he’s giving Chris a speculative look at the same time.

“You have to protect my family, not just go out there trying to kill anybody who comes by,” Talia says, looking back at Chris. “Peter and my kids.”

“Fine,” Chris says. Then he starts to ask something. He stops, pauses, and then jerks his head at Stiles and Lydia. “What about them? And Scott?”

“Care to observe anything about how we’re still locked out of our own house?” Peter says to Lydia.

“Look, we’re sorry we held back the news about your parents,” Stiles breaks in, while Lydia looks irritated and purses her lips. “Really. We had reasons for doing it, but okay, at the end of the day it came down to guessing about what would get you to trust us more, and obviously we fucked that up. So again, sorry. But it was about that, and it wasn’t about trying to screw you over, okay? I mean, seriously, if we wanted to mindfuck you, we’d just fucking hide the bodies and wipe your memories.”

In all honesty, Talia left her anger about that somewhere during the agonizing minutes it took to wrap up her parents’ bodies, and in the process, see exactly how terrible their deaths had been. She has three children to worry about, she’s long since learned that she has to be pragmatic: remember, but don’t dwell, save the energy for more immediate needs. But Peter obviously has been feeling differently, and he’s still young enough to afford to keep his anger at such things.

So it’s surprising when he swings around and stares at Stiles for a few seconds, and then gives the man a stiff, but definite nod. Stiles seems a little nonplussed too, his brows rising before he looks back at Chris.

“That’s up to them,” Talia finally says. “I’m not responsible for them.”

“It’s cool, we’re adults, we can handle ourselves,” Stiles says. “Don’t need an extra werewolf bodyguard, that’s what Scott is for.”

“And as far as Scott is concerned, you can deal with him on your own,” Lydia says.

Stiles looks very surprised at that, and almost asks Lydia something before she looks at him. Then he snorts, amused, and raises his hands in mock-surrender. “Well, that’s…okay, probably fine. Just don’t try and kill him, because you’re not going to manage it, and then I’m gonna stomp you anyway. Got it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, got it,” Chris says tightly.

“Good, because I’ll stand with you against your family, but other than that, you’re on your own,” Talia says. She deliberately turns to give Chris her back, and then walks towards the hall doorway. “Laura? Derek? Cora?”

Her two oldest come running again, and Talia is barely inside the living room before she has to sit down to accommodate them. She hugs them both, then shifts Derek over to the same side as Laura so she can retrieve Cora, who’s crawling over.

Scott quietly slips out of the room, while Peter slips in just as quietly. He hovers just behind Talia, then sits down beside them. “Are you gonna be mean again?” Laura says to him.

Peter grimaces and glances at Talia, and then ducks his head. “They were screaming about Chris because he was talking about Hales being dead and they thought it was you and I—I just—I couldn’t deal with that and finding out about Mom and Dad and so I ditched them and sat in the garage.”

Talia bites back her sigh, and just extracts her arm so she can wrap it around Peter’s shoulders. He resists, then leans into her.

“I meant, saying you were gonna tell Derek and not me,” Laura says, face scrunched up in confusion.

“What? Oh. Oh, that,” Peter says, glancing at Talia again.

“The new werewolf,” Talia says. She pauses, trying to think how—she needs to tell them something, or her children will be pests, but she can’t—she won’t just plunge them into the mess that is their mother’s life right now. “His name is Chris. He’s going to help me and Peter protect you, but he’s not pack. Remember that.”

Derek nods solemnly. “Is he bad?”

Peter coughs a little, and then turns his head and lets out a sort of strangled snicker into his hand. “Honestly, Derek, who knows right now?” Peter says. “Just—just remember, all right? Nobody’s pack but pack. And…and nobody’s family but family.”

Talia smiles at the both of them, and then she moves her head so that Peter’s slides under her chin. “It’ll be all right,” she says. “It will. I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I feel like a broken record saying this, but canon mythology is super-unclear about just about everything. According to season one, alphas have all this power over the people they bite, but then season two Derek has to chain up his newly-turned betas during the full moon and can't just intimidate them into behaving like Alpha!Peter and Scott. Anyway, Scott is super-special true alpha whatever and has gone through a ton of apocalyptic madness, so for purposes of this 'verse, he can force even betas he hasn't personally bitten to shift.


	9. Chapter 9

“I can sleep on the couch,” Chris says.

Stiles resists the urge to take the coffeepot out and throw it at Chris’ head. Also the urge to inform Chris that he works the whole stiff-pride thing a lot more gracefully when he’s older. “No, you’re not, because that would make you the only person on the first floor and no. You’re sharing a room, and there are three bedrooms and you’re not going with the Hales and Lydia will slit your throat, trust me, so Scott’s taking you.”

He stares at the sluggish brown drip coming out of the machine while Chris breathes roughly and scuffles around and finally walks out of the kitchen. Coffee quality’s never been that big of a thing for Stiles, but efficiency is and this is just ridiculous, even taking into account backwards technology. No wonder his dad always preferred to just buy cardboard pitchers from the nearest Tim Horton’s.

“Talia’s putting her kids to bed, but after that she wants to talk about burials,” Lydia says.

“Okay. We should talk about this whole monster in the woods thing, get the download from Chris and Peter before shit blows up again,” Stiles says. Then he sighs, and finally pulls the pot out of the coffeemaker, and turns around. “What.”

“What?” Lydia says back to him. She has her arms crossed over her chest and she’s giving him that look where she knows exactly what he’s thinking about and why he doesn’t like it, and she’s irritated that he’s doing the whole passive-aggressive shtick.

And…Stiles is tired, he decides. Too tired to be stepping up his game, or doing deep, scouring soul-searching, or whatever Lydia’s disappointed he’s not doing.

“Let me just…well, I’ll be around, rope me in for whatever,” he mutters, taking a couple mugs out of the half-unpacked set at his feet. He sets them on the counter and fills both up, and then hooks the fingers of one hand through their handles. With his other hand, he grabs his book off the counter. “Scott?”

“On the roof,” Lydia sighs. She presses her lips together, then suddenly lets the disapproving mistress face crack to show a little weariness herself. “I know.”

“I just sent Chris up. Goddamn it,” Stiles says. He jiggles the mugs, then shakes his head and twists around Lydia. “Okay. Okay, well, if Scott’s not down by the time I come back in, I’ll go get him.”

Lydia nods and looks like she’s going to let him go, and then at the last minute she puts her hand out and catches his arm. “Stiles,” she says, hesitating. “It’s not a blank slate for us. It can’t be. You know that.”

“Well, yeah, seeing as I’m not a real big fan of involuntary memory loss,” Stiles mutters. But he’s half-hearted about it, and he stops to crane down and peck Lydia’s temple as he goes.

When he steps into the garage, Peter’s shoulders and back tense up, but Peter doesn’t turn around. They took the bodies out of the back of the SUV and unwrapped the tarp from around them, so now they’re just lying on canvas in the empty space next to the SUV. It looks like somebody maybe started to clean off the bodies, too, since some of the dirt and dried blood is gone, and the hair looks neater. There’s a wadded-up, dampish rag on the edge of the canvas, and when Stiles walks around to stand next to Peter, he sees dusty smears on Peter’s fingertips.

“Talia’s turn isn’t for another twenty minutes,” Peter says. He’s sitting at the edge of the canvas, just staring down at his dead parents. “If you had another surprise for us. Seeing as she’s the one who’s—”

“Okay, one, we hashed out that one, and two, we didn’t tell her either, so stop projecting your pack hierarchy issues onto me. I honestly never really have seen how the whole alpha-beta thing applies to you, seeing as you always did whatever you wanted,” Stiles says. He gets down onto the concrete platform next to Peter and puts a mug in front of Peter, then starts sipping from the other.

Peter looks at the mug and the side of his mouth moves, but not enough to tell if it’s negative or positive. “So you say, right before mixing me up with other mes again. And I think it’s on purpose.”

“Because it is on purpose. English verb tenses are weird enough without trying to figure out how to use them for nonlinear progressions,” Stiles says. He swallows some coffee, then wipes his mouth off on the back of his hand. “They’re not going to revive. Not with the stuff I’ve put on this house.”

“That’s not the only reason we sit with our dead,” Peter says irritably, his head finally coming around to look at Stiles. He’s all ready to launch into something and then he frowns and tilts his head. “You know, just because—because you know things about people who are versions of me doesn’t mean you can predict everything I feel. So you think I know how I feel about people not telling me things—so you don’t know how I feel about this, do you?”

“No,” Stiles says. “Nope, guess not. Though if you’re asking if I know what it’s like to have to sit up with your dead parents, I do know. But hey, you know, they were my parents, not yours, and these are your parents, not mine.”

“You’re—just—I don’t even know why you’re trying, anyway,” Peter says, twisting forward. He rubs at the side of his head, then pulls his hand around to pinch the bridge of his nose. “If I’m just going to be evil.”

Stiles starts to repeat yet again that all jokes aside, they’re both smart enough to understand the concept of free will, and then he stops himself, seeing how Peter’s hunching over. He looks away, suddenly wondering whether he should just go deal with Scott, and then thinks about his dad again, telling him the hard things never let you go away.

“Do you even—I didn’t even really like them anymore,” Peter suddenly says. He’s folded up with his knees nearly propping his chin up, staring over them at the bodies. “So they’re dead, and I want to kill whatever killed them, but I don’t know that I’d want them back if I had a—if I could time-travel. I don’t know that I’d use it to save them. So is that how I end up evil?”

“You don’t always end up evil,” Stiles says. He glances over at the same time as Peter, who looks startled. “I mean, yeah, it’s a lot rarer, but…there are a lot of alternate timelines. Lots of versions. Lots. Like sometimes my dad’s alive and sometimes he was never born and sometimes he was but he’s dead before I get there, and…and sometimes he dies while I’m there.”

“But you always miss him, right?” Peter asks after a moment. “You smell like it.”

“Yeah. Well, I loved my dad— _my_ dad, the one who actually contributed to this me.” Stiles takes a long drink of coffee, thinking he should’ve also slipped some alcohol into it. “But sometimes I’m glad he’s dead, and…it’s not because he’s evil in a timeline. Sometimes—it’s just better to miss him than have him around. Just easier.”

Peter’s still looking at him, expression a mixture of curiosity and resentment so palpable that Stiles almost puts his hand up to push it away from him. A few minutes go by and then Peter sticks his hand out and picks up the mug. He doesn’t drink from it, just holds it a little bit like he might still let it drop and smash.

“I can’t tell whether you mean that or you’re just trying to butter me up,” Peter finally says.

“Well, you know, little of both. I like to multitask, and I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, but the kind of people who time-travel a lot are also the kind of people who don’t mind repeatedly being where they’re not supposed to be,” Stiles says. He swirls what’s left of his coffee, then downs it in one swallow. Then he pushes up into a squat while flicking the book out to Peter. “But here’s the thing, Peter—if it makes you feel better, who cares?”

“Maybe I do, because maybe I want to get to make those choices about how I grow up,” Peter says. He’s sharp about it, but at the same time, the look he’s giving Stiles is more than a little exposed, like he wishes he could agree with Stiles. And then his eyes drop to the book, and exasperation and embarrassment touch his cheeks with a little red before confusion fades that off. “What…what is…”

“Look, at least take advantage of the future while it’s here,” Stiles says. He wiggles the book in Peter’s face, then angles it so he can slip it between Peter’s chin and knees into Peter’s lap. “I mean, we don’t even know if Pratchett’s going to make it to this one here. It’s not just our families that change from timeline to timeline, you know.”

Peter laughs a little incredulously, but he’s lowering his knees to look at the book. “I didn’t, but thank you for making sure I do now.”

“Just try and get it back to me without claw-marks?” Stiles says.

The amusement dies out of Peter’s face as he presses his lips together. He sucks his breath a little, fighting something, and then he just shrugs. Puts his hand into his lap and plucks out the book. “You can’t just go back and get another copy?”

“No,” Stiles says. “No, I can’t. You can’t go back. When you jump, that’s it.”

“Oh,” Peter says. He looks up at Stiles again, still not amused, but he’s not exactly angry either. His eyes flick a little, going from Stiles’ eyes to nose and then back to eyes, and then he nods. “Oh, well…all right. Good to know.”

Stiles gets all the way up to his feet, and Peter looks down at the book. Peter doesn’t open it, but he turns it over and reads the back cover while sipping at his coffee. He’s still doing that when Stiles leaves.

* * *

Talia’s ten minutes late when her brother slips into the bedroom. She smells him and groans, then has to interrupt that to pull the blankets back up over a squirming Cora yet again. “Sorry, I—”

“Figured,” Peter snorts. He comes over, looks on as Laura complains that she wants another glass of water, and then sits down at the end of the bed. “If you go get water, you’re not going to find out about the Unseen University.”

Laura stops, narrows her eyes, and then shuffles back under the blankets. When Cora wiggles again, she and Derek both put their arms out to pin the blanket in place. “You keep telling me I’m going to miss things,” she says suspiciously.

“Well, you will,” Peter says, pulling off his shoes. Then he swings his legs up onto the bed, bracing himself against the footboard, and plops a book into his lap. He glances at Talia, then tenses a little as he flaps her off. “I just spent five days in our basement, and now I’m sore from sitting on concrete again.”

Talia doesn’t say anything, but she gives Peter’s hair a ruffle on her way out, and it’s telling that he not only doesn’t smack at her, he even pauses in opening up the book for it. In fact, Talia stops at the door and almost goes back, but…Peter’s recovered enough to start reading aloud to the children, who are already peppering him with questions about the story.

So Talia goes ahead and heads down to the garage for her shift at vigil. She checks that the bodies are still undisturbed, and then goes back into the kitchen. She just means to grab something to eat—her belly has been caving in with hunger for hours—but she was only in the garage for a few seconds and somehow Lydia’s managed to appear in the kitchen during that time.

“I didn’t mean right now,” Talia says, remembering

“Well, when?” Lydia says. “Over breakfast with the children?”

The logic is relentless, but that doesn’t mean Talia has to lie down in front of it. She swallows down her anger and pushes past the other woman, grabs the first thing out of the fridge, and then she’s on her way back to the garage when Lydia sighs and reaches out to touch her arm.

“That needs to be microwaved,” Lydia says.

Talia looks down at the container in her hand and wants to throw it through the window. Instead she grits her teeth and pulls off the cover, and inserts it into the microwave. According to the instructions. For the recommended time.

When she turns around, Lydia now is holding out a plain manila folder to her. “Just check yes or no, or if it makes you feel better, cross both out and add a third option,” Lydia says. “I’ll get things started in the morning.”

Sheer curiosity makes Talia take the folder and flip it open. Inside is a piece of paper with some kind of list printed on it; she doesn’t understand it the first time her eyes skim over it and she has to stop herself and go back to the top.

It’s details for a funeral. And for the various preparations and cover-ups that they’ll need in order to account for the deaths in public records without letting on that there are supernatural things in Beacon Hills, and then for the private, werewolf-only rituals after the public smokescreen is over. It’s very thorough, and shows a lot of thought, and Talia barely stops herself from crumpling up the paper in her claws.

The microwave is beeping. Talia looks up, but Lydia’s already taken the food out and put it on the counter near Talia. Lydia sets down silverware as well, and then goes to the kitchen table, where she appears to be setting up to work on something involving several maps. Of Beacon Hills, Talia realizes when she looks more closely.

Talia could ask the woman if she does this a lot, but the answer is obvious. Or if Lydia likes doing it, or likes needling people this way, and the answers to those aren’t nearly as obvious, but Talia…doesn’t. She looks at the list again, then at Lydia, who is calmly settling in a chair, and then she takes the list and her food and cutlery to the other end of the table. Lydia glances up, then goes back to what she’s doing.

“Are you looking for pack?” Talia says, after her second bite. “Is that why?”

“I’m not a werewolf,” Lydia says, measuring out a distance with calipers.

Talia stuffs in another mouthful to keep from blurting out a sharp, stupid retort. “But you’re looking for something. Why else would you leave your own world?”

“Well, maybe because it’s an apocalyptic hellhole,” Lydia says. She lifts her eyes and meets Talia’s, and then makes it clear that she’s not dropping her gaze out of intimidation. “Like you said, you don’t have to worry about taking care of us. We’re responsible for ourselves.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Talia says dryly. “But are you looking to stay here, is what I want to know.”

Lydia glances up again. “Are you?”

Talia—makes herself breathe out normally. She leans back in her chair, then takes her tray off the table and holds it so she can eat without having to move forward. “Touché.”

“We’re not going to leave halfway through,” Lydia says after a moment. “We never do. We stay till all the bodies are buried, if that makes you feel better.”

“It explains a few things,” Talia says slowly. “And…I’d rather know than not know, usually, so…yes, I suppose it does.”

Lydia looks up at her for longer, a little more considering, and then the woman shrugs and flips over her current map for another one. She keeps working while Talia eats, and thinks, and eventually finds the will to reach for that list and start making hard decisions.

* * *

“Are you going to be there all night?” Chris says. He’s the only one in the bed, but he’s curled up as tightly as he can, squeezed into the farthest corner from the window. “I’m not running away, or going to hurt anybody here—that wouldn’t make any sense, that’d just get me caught by my father’s men that much faster.”

Realistically, Scott can’t stay on the roof all night—the area’s not so rural that people won’t notice and call in burglar alerts—but he’s a little tempted. Outside it’s a lot easier to concentrate on other things, like figuring out how they’re going to keep off the hunters, and find this monster in the preserve, and deal with other in-the-know people like Deaton. But Scott just makes himself not look at the window behind him, and just go back to working out patrol schedules on his laptop.

“I’m not guarding you,” Scott says.

Chris laughs, more than a little hysterically. He’s gone back and forth between angry, almost manic outbursts and tense silence for a few hours now, even though he’s gotten to shower and change into new clothes and eat till it looked like he had a bowling ball stuck onto the middle of his rail-thin body. He’s not much like the man Scott’s repeatedly gotten to know.

He’s like Allison, a little, at the beginning, and Scott closes his eyes for a second, then pries them open and applies himself again to the patrol spreadsheet. “Nobody’s going to hurt you tonight, okay?” he mutters. “So just try and get some sleep.”

“You keep _saying_ that,” Chris mutters. “And you keep saying you know what my family’s capable of, and—you’re sane, far as I can tell.”

Scott sighs and drops his head back against his chair, and it lolls and his eyes just happen to cross the window. “I think I’d sleep on the roof if it’d get you to relax,” he says.

Chris shifts in the bedding, then coughs once, a rough, racking noise that’s a testament to how terrible a job his healing is doing with keeping up with his poor condition. “Huh. Maybe not.”

When Scott looks over, Chris is finally tucking his head down onto the bed. The man’s still keeping tabs on him, but Chris is at least trying to fall asleep, and that’s just about all Scott can ask. Or wants to ask, to be honest. He just—he just really wishes he wasn’t here right now.

“Maybe not,” he echoes, and then he makes himself go back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not panic! There is more! It's just this was getting so absurdly long (to the point that it was testing MS Word's ability to load a single document) that I broke it up into multiple installments. The first chapter of the next part will be up tomorrow. And I know, I know, _sloooooow_ build romance. I promise all the UST and denied flirting will go somewhere.
> 
> In many cultures, the custom of sitting up with the dead before the funeral often grew out of the twin purposes of making sure the person was actually dead, and protecting their body from mistreatment (either from mundane human body-snatchers or from supernatural issues, such as demons).
> 
> Seeing as this is set in the early 2000s, Peter has _many_ future Pratchett volumes to look forward to.


End file.
